"No more men go overboard," sternly ordered Ensign Andrews, as he saw more of his men moving to the side of the launch. "Stand by to haul the rescued aboard!"
All care was needed, for the liner was a big one, and doomed soon to take her final plunge. The suction effect on small boats would be tremendous, if they were caught too close to the scene of the foundering.
Lines were cast to jackies who were towing frightened pa.s.sengers. Rescue moved along swiftly, the launches from both destroyers backing slowly away from the settling craft.
"Here y"are, lady!" coaxed one seaman from the first launch, catching a line at twenty feet and placing it in the hands of a frightened woman whose teeth chattered and who was nearly dead from the cold that the icy water sent through to the marrow of her bones. "Think y" can hold on, lady? If y" can, I can go back and help some one else."
The woman, though she spoke no English, guessed the meaning of the question, and shrieked with terror.
"Oh, all right, ma"am," the sailor went on, in a tone of good-humored resignation. "I"ll make sure of you, and hope that some one else won"t drown."
With one arm around her, the other hand holding tight to the rope the jacky allowed himself to be hauled in alongside the launch.
"Take this lady in, quick!" ordered Jacky. "She"s about all in with the cold."
"Better come on board, too, Streeter," advised a petty officer on the launch.
"Too much to be done," replied Seaman Streeter, shoving off and starting to swim back.
"Your teeth are chattering now," called the petty officer, but Seaman Streeter, with l.u.s.ty strokes, was heading for a hatless, white-haired old man whom he made out, under the searchlight glare, a hundred yards away.
This man, too chilled to swim for himself, though buoyed up by a belt, Streeter brought in.
"Come on board, Streeter," insisted the same petty officer.
But surely that jacky was deaf, for he turned and once more struck out.
By the time that the liner had been down four minutes, and the last visible and living person in the water had been rescued, Seaman Streeter had brought in six men and women, five of whom would surely have died of the cold had he not gone to their aid. And he had turned to swim back after a possible seventh.
Nearly six hundred pa.s.sengers and members of the sunken liner"s crew had been saved. Of these the greatest sufferers were taken aboard the "Grigsby" and the "Reed" and the remainder were left in the boats, which were towed astern.
Dave decided that the rescued ones should be landed at an English port twenty-two miles away. This port had rail communication and prompt, effective care could be given to these hundreds of people.
As soon as the start had been made for port, roll-call was held of those who had put off in the launches. Seaman Streeter was not present, nor even accounted for. Promptly Darrin ordered the course changed and the two destroyers went back, making careful search under the searchlights of the surface of the sea near the scene of the foundering. No trace of the missing seaman was found.
Seaman Streeter did not die in battle. He perished in the gentler but no less useful field of saving human life! An orphaned sister in Iowa, his only living near relative, gazes to-day at the appreciative letter she has received from the Navy Department at Washington. Then she turns to a longer and more glowing letter written by the, to her, strange hand of David Darrin, Lieutenant-Commander, United States Navy.
In less than two hours the destroyers, with their respective strings of towed boats, arrived at the British port and the work of transferring the rescued to sh.o.r.e began. Dan"s dead and wounded were also sent ash.o.r.e.
It was afterward reported that nine human beings were unaccounted for.
Four more died in the boats on the way to land.
While the transfers to sh.o.r.e were being made Dan Dalzell came aboard the "Grigsby" to greet his chum. They chatted while the damaged bridge was being repaired.
"Danny-boy," Dave remarked seriously, "that exploding mine showed us clearly what is expected of us. It is our task to see that all these near-by waters are cleared of such dangerous objects."
"Surely we cannot get every mine that the Huns plant," objected Dalzell.
"We must get as many of them as we can. I know that all the British mine-sweepers are constantly on the job, but if necessary we must have more mine-sweepers. We must keep the paths of navigation better cleared than proved to be the case to-night."
"Oh, say!" expostulated Dalzell, his eyes wide open, "we simply cannot, even with twice as many mine-sweepers, find every blooming mine that the Huns choose to sow in the Channel and North Sea."
"To find and take up every mine should be our standard," Dave insisted, "and we must live as close to that standard as we possibly can."
"Then we did wrong to go after the destroyers this night?" Dan demanded, curtly.
"Of course not, for that bombardment of that defenseless little town, carried on longer, might have cost as many lives as are likely to be lost in the case of a steamship hitting a floating mine."
"We can"t do everything at the same time," Dan contended.
"Then we must strive to do ninety-nine per cent. of everything," Darrin urged, his jaws set. "Danny-boy, I feel as badly as you do when a single innocent life is lost in the area that we are held responsible for."
"How soon do you put for sea?" Dalzell asked.
"As soon as our boats return and are hoisted on board."
Darrin was as good as his word. Twenty-one minutes later, while dawn was still invisible, the two Yankee destroyers turned seaward again. There was more work, and sterner, for them to do, and it lurked just beyond!
CHAPTER V
EYES THAT LOOKED DOWN FROM THE AIR
DAWN found the two destroyers cruising slowly northward, a little more than a mile apart.
Within sight of the bridges of the two craft were eight small, snub-nosed mine-sweepers. Frequently changing their course, these little craft were doing their utmost to pick up any mine that may have been planted just far enough under water to be struck below the water line by pa.s.sing vessels.
"I suppose we"re of the few who have ever seen the flash of an exploding floating mine," Dave remarked to Lieutenant Fernald. "The sea was so rough and choppy, last night, that the mine, at the instant of impact, happened to be in the trough of the sea and partly above water."
"Yes," nodded Fernald. "Had the waves been longer, the mine would have sunk to its usual depth. Had it not cost lives and a good ship, it would have been a sight worth seeing. As it was, since the lives and the ship had to be lost, I am glad that I was there to see it."
It was broad daylight now. Red streaks off in the east indicated that the sun would soon appear. But from the southwest something of at least equal interest appeared in the sky.
At the lookout"s call Fernald turned to study the object in the sky through his gla.s.s.
"It"s an airship, a dirigible," announced the executive officer.
"If an English dirigible, then it"s all right," Dave nodded. "But, if it happens to be a German Zeppelin returning from a raid over England, then it will become our solemn duty to get the anti-aircraft gun in position and pray for a chance to take a fair shot."
"It"s a craft of the smaller English dirigible pattern," Fernald announced, still studying the distant speck in the sky, which, of course, looked much larger in the field of his gla.s.s. "Yes, it"s an unmistakable "blimp"."
This latter is the slang name given to the British dirigibles.
"Better have the air-craft gun men at their station," advised Dave, and this was done.
Ten minutes later, however, the "blimp" was so close at hand that there could be no mistaking its ident.i.ty. It belonged, beyond a question, to one of the squadrons of the Royal Naval Air Service.