"The boy-sticker shoved us over to a table, and there was an officer sitting with a bottle and gla.s.s, and a small chunk of a sort of black bread."
"That stuff is made of sawdust and oatmeal, I"ll bet," said Beany. "It was worse than we would give the pigs!"
"Well," said Porky, "we stood where we had been shoved, and pretty soon the officer looked up, and the boy-sticker commenced to talk to him in German.
"The officer commenced to look real bright and interested. He said, "Goot! Goot!" three or four times, and then he said something to us in German. I shook my head, and he tried French.
He said, "Parley voos Frongsay?" and I said, "Wee wee!" and Beany he b.u.t.ted in and said, "Better not be so fresh with your wees unless he"s got a dictionary to lend you," and the officer jumped and said, "Himmel! Where have you come from?" in just as good English as that. We both said Syracuse; and he laughed, and said, "What a small world! Why, I went to Syracuse University!"
"You would never think a guy that had chances in a real country like ours would act like he did. He kept us standing there, and he asked us all about everything back home, and just as we thought he was getting real friendly he said cool as anything, "We saved you because we are short handed. Do as you are told. Obey. It"s your one chance. We will shoot you, no doubt, when we get to port."
"Wasn"t that nice and encouraging," asked Beany of the attentive audience. "They made us take off all our clothes and put on those old things that had belonged to the two fellows who had died. And then we went to work. Well, he set me to fixing up the little bunk place he slept in, when he did sleep. The rest of us just laid down anywhere. There"s not a lot of room in a submarine."
"Yes, and first thing," said Beany, "Porky was wigwagging me to be careful what I did, and to try to keep the Captain from looking."
"Yes, because what do you think I had found? A wad of papers that looked like plans just lying around on his locker, and a whole row of bottles. Medicines I suppose, and one of them said Anesthetique, and I made up my mind that was dope."
"The next thing happened, he set me to oiling up the torpedoes.
Gee, it made me so mad to see those great smooth things lying there on their shelves ready to roll into the tubes and be shot at some good American ship! All at once it came to me what to do if I could work it. So I took that knife Mr. Leffingwell gave me, the one with a whole tool-chest in it, and I opened it behind my hand, and found a dandy screw-driver. Then I took a look over the torpedo I was fussing with, and I saw it steered by its tail.
I knew it must be carefully adjust, and I sort of memorized where all the screws were."
"They can remember anything," said Colonel Bright to Captain Greene. "Go on!"
"Well, sir, that night I went to sleep, or pretended to, right under the torpedo shelves, and when I heard everybody snore, I went to work, and twisted all those screws a little."
The Captain burst out into a roar of laughter.
"Well, son," cried Captain Greene, "it certainly worked! Could you see the result of your scheme?"
"No, sir, we couldn"t see a thing. But I thought it must have worked because--well, I felt it must!
"Then everybody in the boat seemed to be mad at everybody else; and everything they said sounded as though they were threatening each other. Once the Captain laughed when the boy-sticker man said something to me, and he said,
""Do you know what he said?" And I said no; and the Captain said, "Well, it"s too bad you never learned German! He was telling you just what he intends to do to you as soon as I give him leave.
He"s a faithful soul, is Heinrich, and he wants you for his very own."
"I said, "Well, what you going to do about it? I guess it made me sort of mad to have him sit there and poke fun at me. He looked at me a minute, and then he up and shied his gla.s.s at me.
It was a big heavy gla.s.s, but he was a little full as usual, and didn"t aim very well."
"It took him on the side of the head, just the same," said Beany.
"Well, anyhow," continued Porky, "he looked at me and he said, "When you speak to me say Sir or next time I"ll kill you.""
Porky grinned. "He looked as though he meant it, too."
"You bet he meant it!" said Beany. "He was just aching to shoot us through the torpedo tube, the way they always get rid of dead ones. Gee, I was scared to death for Porky. That Captain seemed to pick on Porky, and he mixed us so, us looking just alike, that he put a white band around my arm, so he could tell which wasn"t Porky."
"Well, I guess you don"t want to hear all this junk," said Porky.
"We want every bit of it," said Captain Greene.
"Tell them about the fight they had," said Beany, shifting his bandaged hand.
"We saw one thing right off," said Porky. "The Captain was the whole push, just as if he was king. He sat there with a big revolver beside him on the table, and I can tell you he didn"t trust his own shadow. The way Beany, and I doped it out, he was running in hard luck. He had been sent out to sink a certain number of ships before he could report, and all he had torpedoed was just the Firefly. Grub was getting low, two of his men were dead, and another one was curled up on the locker sicker than a pup. Once in awhile the Captain would look at him, and say to us in English, "About twenty-four hours more, eh? Then he goes through the tube.""
"He just didn"t have any heart at all," shuddered Beany. "Of course that was why they didn"t kill us; they couldn"t run the boat and tend to the torpedoes and the periscope and the engines all at once in a case of a fight, with three men short. And then they had to fight."
"Tell us about that," said Colonel Bright.
"I don"t know when it was," said Porky. "Night and day was all alike down there, but there was one big yellow-haired fellow that ran the engine. He had been ordered to show me about it; and, say, I will say I can run a submarine now. It was what you call intensive training. When I was slow, he gave me a clip on the head. He could just do anything with machinery. But they certainly have got that submarine engine perfected so it will do everything but talk. Any child could run it as soon as he learned the different levers. I don"t believe we have anything like it; but we can have now because there"s the pattern outside there. You didn"t sh.e.l.l it, did you?"
"Certainly not," said Captain Greene. "It is in charge of a picked crew of our men right outside."
"Well, don"t let "em take her down until I get a chance to show them how she works. There is just one lever that controls the diving gear, and that is hidden, so you can"t find it if you don"t know about it. I came near turning the old thing over. I got beaten up that trip."
"Get to the fight," said Beany.
"The engineer was nutty. He talked all the time and muttered to himself, and it got on the Captain"s nerves or what he had left of them. He stared at the engineer half the time; and that made Louie peevish, I suppose. He took it out on me more or less--kept me sweating over that engine every minute he was awake. He wanted a drink too. It was sort of raw the way that Captain would sit there and guzzle and never give the others a bit of it.
Louie would watch and watch and swallow hard; and the Captain would watch him back again and grin. They were just like a lot of savage dogs."
"Well, they didn"t have enough to eat, to begin with," said Beany, "and then the air was so bad, and they were all cooped up in that little s.p.a.ce, and you couldn"t hear any outside noises at all. You don"t know how funny that is.
"They took our watches, so we couldn"t tell the time, and, honest, I thought we must have been there a month. And they all knew that something pretty fierce would happen to them it they went back home without sinking the ships that had been required of them. They have it all down to a system.
"Well, pretty soon Louie took to leaving me with the engine, and he would walk back past the Captain. He saluted him every time, and he watched that bottle just like a starved dog. And every time the Captain would slowly take hold of the bottle and grin.
And then Louie would walk back again.
"Then once he went a little too close, and the Captain said something in German, and stuck out his foot, and tripped Louie up. He fell the length of the apartment; just plunged down because he wasn"t expecting it. Beany was trying to do something for the sick man on the locker, and I was at the engine. We were sort of out of the way; and it was a lucky thing, because Louie went mad then and there, that"s all there was to it. I never saw anything so awful, and neither did Beany. He didn"t look human.
He had the bluest eyes you ever saw when he was right, and they turned red as blood. And his face got dead white, and he showed all his teeth like a dog does. He had big yellow teeth with longer ones, like a dog"s fangs, at the corners. And say, he was quicker than a cat! The Captain didn"t have a chance to pull his gun. Louie had him by the arms, and was trying to break him in two backward. A couple of other men ran to help the Captain, and that Louie just kicked out back, and doubled them both up, one after the other, in a corner. n.o.body else interfered. I suppose Louie knew, if he knew anything, that he was a gone goose anyhow, and he wanted to punish the Captain. They never said a word.
Louie had the Captain"s right wrist in his left hand, so the Captain couldn"t shoot, and I saw he was trying to twist the Captain"s right arm so he could break it."
"That Captain was some quick, too," said Beany.
"They tripped and fell, and went rolling all over the place.
That was when I most tipped the boat over. I forgot my levers, watching them and wondering if we would all get killed before the thing was over. Once they broke loose and came up, one each side of the table and the Captain leveled his revolver and pulled the trigger but it didn"t fire. Guess it jammed or something.
Anyhow, in the second that it refused to work, Louie was across the table and at him again. He was sure mad now. There was regular froth at the corners of his mouth, and he reached out as he clinched and clawed the whole side of the Captain"s face off.
Gosh!
"Then all at once the Captain got his right arm loose, and he brought round like lightning, and pressed the muzzle of the revolver right against Louie"s side and bang! off she went.
Louie never spoke, just grunted, and crumpled down on the floor.
The Captain looked at him a minute, and then he dropped into a chair himself; and I tell you by that time he looked as though he did need a bracer. He was all in. Louie would have killed him sure as sure if he hadn"t shot him.
"n.o.body spoke or said anything. The Captain sat there a long time, just panting and staring down at Louie. Then he looked at me, and said, "He had it coming to him. Can you run that engine and not turn turtle?"
"And I said, "Sure!" Then he said something in German to the men. He talked and talked, but of course we couldn"t tell what he said. Presently four of them took Louie and laid him in the torpedo chute, and there he was; and n.o.body paid any more attention to him than if he wasn"t there at all. Gee, it was awful!"