"Hmm--hang on to it."
"You bet I"m going to. But maybe he wouldn"t like now, even if I met him again--after what he knows----"
"Look here, Tom. You"ll be sailing in a day or so and when you come back I"ll probably be in Washington. Perhaps you"ll wish to enlist over here soon. I"m going to give you a little b.u.t.ton, _kind of_, as you would say--to keep in your head. And this is it. Remember, there"s only one person in the world who can disgrace Tom Slade, and that is Tom Slade himself."
He slapped Tom on the shoulder, and they strolled up the dingy, crooked street, past the jumble of old brown houses, until it petered out in a plain where there was a little cemetery, filled with wooden crosses.
"Those poor fellows all did their bit," said Mr. Conne.
Tom looked silently at the straight rows of graves. He seemed to be getting nearer and nearer to the war.
"How far is the front?" he asked.
"Not as far as from New York to Boston, Tom. Straight over that way is Paris. When you get past Paris you begin to see the villages all in ruins,--between the old front and the new front."
"I"ve hiked as far as that."
"Yes, it isn"t far."
"Do you know where our boys are--what part of it?"
"Yes, I know, but I"m not going to tell you," Mr. Conne laughed. "You"d like to be there, I suppose."
For a few moments Tom did not answer. Then he said in his old dull way, "I got a right to go now. I got a right to be a soldier, to make up for--_him_. The next time I get back here I"m going to join. If we don"t get back for six weeks, then I"ll be eighteen. I made up my mind now."
Mr. Conne laughed approvingly and Tom gazed, with a kind of fascination, across the pleasant, undulating country.
"I could even hike it," he repeated; "it seems funny to be so near."
But when finally he did reach the front, it was over the back fence, as one might say, and after such an experience as he had never dreamed of.
CHAPTER XIX
HE IS CAST AWAY AND IS IN GREAT PERIL
"They"re more likely to spill the cup when it"s empty," said the deck steward, who was a sort of walking encyclopedia to Tom.
"I suppose that"s because we haven"t got such a good convoy going back,"
Tom said.
"That and high visibility. You see, the less there is in the ship, the higher she sets up in the water, and the higher she sets the better they can see her. We"re in ballast and floating like a balloon. They get better tips about westbound ships, too. All the French ports are full of German agents. They come through Switzerland."
The first day out on the voyage homeward was very rough. At about dusk Tom was descending the steps from the bridge with a large tray when he saw several of the ship"s people (whose time was pretty much their own on the westward trip) hurrying to the rail. One of them called to him, "We"re in for it;" but Tom was not alarmed, for by this time he was too experienced a "salt" to be easily excited.
"You can see the wake!" someone shouted.
There was a sudden order on the bridge, somebody rushed past him and then the tray, with all its contents, went crashing upon the steps and Tom staggered against the stair-rail and clung to it.
The ship was struck--struck as if by a bolt out of the sky.
He had been through this sort of thing before and he was not scared. He was shocked at the suddenness of it, but he kept his head and started across the deck for his emergency post, aft. Everyone seemed to be running in that direction.
He knew that however serious the damage, there was but small danger to life, since the convoy was at hand and since there were so very few people upon the ship; there were life-boats enough, without crowding, for all on board.
But the impact, throwing him down the steps, as it did, had caused him to twist his foot and he limped over to the rail for its a.s.sistance in walking. Men were now appearing in life-preservers, and hovering impatiently in the vicinity of the lifeboat davits, but he heard no orders for manning the boats and he was distinctly aware of the engines still going.
[Ill.u.s.tration: TOM WAS STANDING, OR TRYING TO STAND, ON A GERMAN SUBMARINE.]
He hobbled along, holding the rail, intent upon reaching the davits astern, where the third officer would give him orders, when suddenly there was a splitting sound, the rail gave way, he struggled to regain his balance and went headlong over the side, still clutching the piece of rail which he had been leaning on.
He had the presence of mind to keep hold of it and to swim quickly away from the vessel, trying to shout as he swam; but the sudden ducking had filled his mouth with water and he could do little more than splutter.
He could see as he looked up that one of the upright stanchions which at once strengthened the rail and supported the deck above, was in splinters and it was this that had weakened the rail so that it gave way. Vaguely he remembered reading of a submarine which, after despatching a torpedo, had tried by gunfire to disable the steering apparatus of a ship, and he wondered if that was the cause of the shattered stanchion.
He would not have believed that one could be carried out of hearing so rapidly, but before he realized it, he was thrown down into the abysmal depths of a great sea with only a towering wall of black water to be seen, and when he was borne up on the crest of another great roller he saw the ship and her convoy at what seemed a great distance from him.
The vessels had seemed far apart from his viewpoint on deck, but now, so great was his distance from them, that they seemed to form a very compact flotilla and the hurried activities on the stricken vessel were not visible at all.
He shouted l.u.s.tily through the gathering dusk, but without result. Again and again he called, till his head throbbed from the exertion. He could see the smoke now, from his own vessel he thought, and he feared that she was under way, headed back to France.
Later, when he was able to think connectedly at all, it was a matter of wonder to him that he could have been carried so far in so short a time, for he was not familiar with the fact known to all sailors that each roller means a third of a mile and that a person may be carried out of sight on the ocean in five minutes.
He could discover no sign now of the flotilla except several little columns of smoke and he realized that the damage to the _Montauk_ could not be serious and that they were probably making for the nearest French port.
Tom was an expert swimmer, but this accomplishment was, of course, of no avail now. He was nearly exhausted and his helplessness encouraged the fatal spirit of surrender. With a desperate impulse he all but cast the broken rail from him, resigned to struggle no more with its uncertain buoyancy, which yielded to his weight and submerged him with every other motion which he made.
Then he had an idea. Dragging from the wood was part of the rope network which had been the under part of the ship"s rail. It was stiff with paint. Grasping it firmly in his mouth he managed to get his duck jacket off and this he spread across the stiff network, floating the whole business, jacket underneath, so that the painted rope netting acted as a frame to hold the jacket spread out.
To his delight, he found this very buoyant, and with the strip of wood which he lashed across it with his scarf and belt it was almost as good as a life-preserver. He had to be careful to keep it flat upon the water, for as soon as one edge went under the whole thing acted like the horizontal rudders of a submarine. But he soon got the hang of managing it and it was not half bad.
CHAPTER XX
HE IS TAKEN ABOARD THE "TIN FISH" AND QUESTIONED
And then he saw it. Whether it had been near him all the time he did not know. It was in the same wave-valley with himself and seemed to be looking at him. Even before there was any sign of human life upon it, it seemed to be standing off there just looking at him, and there was something uncanny about it. It looked like the little flat cupola of the town hall at home, only it was darker, and on top of it two long things stood up like flagpoles. And it bobbed and moved and just stood there--looking at him.
A life boat might have a name instead of a number but it could not look at him like that.
Then he saw that it was nearer to him, although he could not exactly see it move. On top of it were two persons, one of whom appeared to be looking at him through a long gla.s.s. Tom wished that he could see the rest of it--the part underneath--for then it would not seem so unnatural.