Had George Belding not been such a stubborn fellow he never would have stuck to his opinion about the strange call received by the Colodia’s radio men, by wireless telegraph. For neither the chief, called Sparks, nor his assistants or students (the latter scornfully entitled “hams”) had spelled anything like “help” out of the strange sounds to which Belding’s attention had been called.
“Don’t tell me such stuff,” insisted the chief. “That’s as old as the hills, George. When I first went into wireless, it used to be the standing joke to feed the student a ‘Help! We are lost’ call to steady his nerves. It was called C D Q in those old times.”
“I am not kidding,” said George Belding rather sullenly, for he did not like to be laughed at.
“No. And don’t try to make me believe that anybody is trying to kid you with a ‘help’ call,” Sparks said, shaking his head.
But as we have said, George was stubborn. Sparks thought he had spelled out the name of the destroyer in those grating sounds. If so, why shouldn’t it be just as reasonable that Belding had heard the dots and dashes spelling ‘h-e-l-p’?
Belding put this up to Whistler and Al when he had a chance to tell them about it in the first dog watch. He was not excited at all. He simply did not like to have his word doubted or be laughed at by Sparks.
“As for being laughed at,” the very sensible Philip Morgan said, “it strikes me that I wouldn’t be worried by that. Your opinion is just as good as old Sparks’ or anybody else’s, for that matter. Eh, Al?”
“Why not?” returned the other Seacove boy. “It was George heard the sounds, not Sparks. Get a chance to listen in again, George.”
“Can it be possible that there is somebody trying to send a message for help to the Colodia?” Whistler went on slowly.
“Cracky!” ejaculated Al, “I didn’t think of that.”
“Sparks says that he thought he spelled out the destroyer’s name. George has heard the word ‘help.’ Get after it, George!” he added, earnestly. “Don’t let ’em put you down.”
“But who under the sun would be doing such a thing?” demanded Al. “Is it a joke, after all?”
“It will be a sorry joke if our Government gets after the sender. The law is mighty strict about private wireless plants, you know,” said Phil Morgan.
“There is one sure thing,” declared Belding. “If anybody is trying to call this ship, they don’t know much about the regulation codes and sendings. They don’t know the destroyer’s number, and the way they handle Morse is a caution to cats!”
“Stick to it,” advised Whistler.
But George did not really need to be urged in this direction. The next afternoon watch he was back at the radio room begging to “listen in” again. Because of the interest the radio men had begun to feel in the “ghost talk” in the air at this time of day, both Sparks and one of his assistants were on hand.
The regular radio men were listening for the peculiar voice in the wireless, at all hours; but it seemed to be confined now to an hour or two in mid-afternoon. One after the other the Colodia’s radio force slipped on the receiving harness and listened to the mystery. Belding got his chance, in spite of the fact that Sparks laughed at him.
This time Belding kept the instrument tuned down to the commercial waves on which it seemed the “ghost talk” was the more easily transmitted. Now and then he got the spelling of a letter clearly. But not a word in its entirety did he hear on this day—not even “help.”
“I get ‘r’, ‘d’, and ‘b’ a lot,” he signed, turning the receiver over to Sparks again. “They are in rotation—‘r’, ‘d’, ‘b’—and sometimes there follows another ‘d’. There are letters missing between them, excepting between the ‘b’ and the first ‘d’.”
“No ‘help’ stuff, eh?” queried Sparks.
“Nor any ‘Colodia’,” snorted Belding.
But he sat and watched the radio chief give his full attention to the mystery, and after a minute or two saw that the man was spelling something out carefully on the pad of scratch-paper under his hand. Belding peered over his shoulder and saw Sparks set down these letters as he heard them in the sound waves:
R DB
R DB R
R DB D
RE B D
R D RD
R DB
RE I
Sparks pulled off the harness and swung about to look at George Belding.
“Is that about what you heard?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir. At least, in part.”
“Well, hang it all!” cried Sparks. “That’s a still newer combination. It’s neither ‘Colodia’ nor ‘help.’ I tell you it beats me, George.”
When Belding left the wireless room he took with him the piece of paper on which Sparks had written. The letters in combination seemed to mean nothing; but he showed them to Whistler and Al Torrance when he found those two chums together.
“Looks like one of those puzzles they have on the back page of the papers at home,” said Al. “You know: The ones you are supposed to fill in with other letters to make ’em read the same up and down and across.”
“This is no acrostic,” said Belding firmly.
But Whistler stared steadily at the paper for some minutes without saying a word. Only his lips slowly puckered, and Al nudged him to break off the thoughtful whistle which he knew his chum was about to vent.
“Huh? Oh! All right,” murmured Morgan, accepting Al’s admonition.
“What do you see?” asked Belding.
“I see that it is the same word each time, of course,” replied Whistler. “But I don’t believe my eyes.”
“What’s that?” demanded the other two boys.
“If the ghost of the air,” said Whistler gravely, “did not spell out the name of this destroyer this afternoon, it certainly did try to put over the name of another ship.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Al. “Tell us.”
“What ship do you mean?” asked Belding, scowling thoughtfully at the paper.
Quickly Whistler covered the letters on the sheet as, with his own pencil, he filled in the gaps between them. When he flashed the sheet before the eyes of his two friends each of the lines of letters made the same word. And that word was:
“REDBIRD”
“My goodness! You have gone crazy, Phil Morgan!” almost shouted Belding.
“Cracky! that’s the ship your sisters and Belding’s folks are aboard, you know,” gasped Torry. “Why, Whistler, I believe with George that you are crazy!”
“All I see,” said Morgan, quite unruffled, “is that George brought us some letters that, very easily and sensibly, make the name of his father’s ship now bound for Bahia.”
“Cracky!” exclaimed Al again.
“But—but do you suppose anything has happened to father, mother and the girls? Do you really, Morgan?”
“Who said anything about ‘something happening’ to them?” demanded his friend with some heat. “I am merely pointing out the possibility that the name of that ship is in a wireless message that somebody seems anxious to put over.”
“But who—what——”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Whistler, stopping Belding at that point. “We don’t know. We have merely learned that the radio men first spelled out the name of this destroyer. Now you and the chief have caught the name of the Redbird. The two names seem to be in the combination. Therefore, is it ‘crazy’, as you fellows say, for me to suggest that perhaps the mysterious message deals with both of the vessels named?”
“I begin to see your idea, Phil,” admitted Belding. “But it did shake me. You know, I spelled out ‘help’ first of all.”
“But you did not get that to-day,” said Whistler quickly. Then he added: “We know the Redbird is fitted with wireless.”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps somebody aboard is trying to send a message to us just for fun.”
“For fun, indeed!” exclaimed Al Torrance. “People aren’t fooling with the radio ‘for fun’ in these times.”
“I don’t know. You know how girls are,” drawled Whistler. “George, does your sister Lilian know anything about Morse and the radio?”
“Oh, my prophetic soul!” gasped Belding, suddenly arousing to the point Whistler made. “I should say she did! Lil got to be fairly good at both sending and receiving when we had the plant on the roof of our house.”
“Could this be Lilian trying to get a message over to us—just for fun?”
“Cut out the ‘fun’ business,” implored Al. “That doesn’t sound reasonable.” But that was the very idea that caught George Belding.
“She’s that kind of girl,” he declared. “Tell her she must not do a thing, and she’s sure to try it. But I don’t understand——”
“Of course, it’s only a guess on my part,” Whistler said quickly. “But can’t you think of some way to try her out—identify her, you know? Tell Sparks what you think and get him to let you try to send her a message.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Al. “So there’s nothing more than that in it? Shucks! Another mystery gone fooey.”
“Phil’s idea does sound awfully reasonable,” added Belding, evidently much relieved in his mind.
Phil Morgan’s countenance did not reveal his secret gravity. He still remembered that the word “help” had been connected with the names of the two craft—the destroyer and the merchant vessel—which seemed to be a part of the strange message out of the air.
If the Seacove boys, George Belding and the radio force, found an interest aside from the general object of the Colodia’s cruise, the bulk of the crew were not so fortunate. Their keen outlook for the German raider the Sea Pigeon, began to be dulled as the tropical days dragged by.
The destroyer was running down a westerly course near enough to the equatorial regions to cause every one to feel the languor that usually affects the northern-born in southern climes. The boys lolled around the decks, and found drill and stations hard tasks indeed.
Everybody said: “Is it hot enough for you?” And with the permission of the executive officer more than half the crew slept on deck instead of below in their hammocks.
During a part of the afternoon watch the engines of the destroyer were stopped, a life-raft was lowered on the shady side of the ship, and the boys in squads were allowed to bathe, the quartermaster’s boat with two sharpshooters in it, lying off a few yards on the watch for sharks.
The Colodia had an objective point, however, toward which she was heading without much loss of time. Hour after hour she steamed at racing speed and through an ocean that seemed to be utterly deserted by other craft.
In those wartimes the lanes of steam shipping, and sailing craft as well, had been changed. Ships sometimes sailed far off their usual course to reach in safety a port, the track to which was watched by the German underseas boats. The Colodia would ordinarily have passed half a hundred ships on this course which she followed toward the American shores.
Cruising the seas, whether for pleasure, profit, or on war bent, is a very different thing nowadays from formerly. Practically this change has been brought about by a young Italian who had a vision.
No longer does a ship go blindly on her course, unable to learn who may be her neighbor, deaf to what the world ashore is doing as long as she remains out of port.
The wireless telegraph has made this change. The radio furnishes all the gossip of sea and land. Even in wartime the news out of the air puts those at sea in touch with their fellowmen.
All day long, and through the night as well, the radio force on the Colodia might listen to the chatter of the operators on land and sea. Unnecessary conversation between operators is frowned upon; but who is going to “listen in” on a couple of thousand miles of wireless and report private conversations between working radio men?
On the Colodia a man was at the instrument practically every minute, day or night. Commercial messages, weather warnings, code sendings of three or four Governments, the heavy soundwaves from Nauem, the German naval headquarters, flashes from ship to ship—all this grist passed through the wireless mill of the destroyer.
All the time, too, they were seeking news of the Sea Pigeon, the German raider, which the Colodia had been sent out particularly to find. Of course, the finish of the submarine One Thousand and One had been reported to the naval base, and an emphatic, “Well done!” had been returned. But the sinking of the submarine, after all, was not the main issue.
As the destroyer had combed the sea for her prey, so she combed the air by her wireless for news of the raider. And when the news came it was as unexpected as it was welcome. The men were offering wagers that the destroyer would end in seeing New York again rather than sighting the Sea Pigeon, when just after the wheel and lookout were relieved at four bells of the morning watch, the radio began to show much activity.
Messengers passed, running to and fro from the station to the officers’ quarters. There was not usually much radio work at this hour, and the watch on deck began to take notice.
George Belding slid around to the radio room and showed a questioning countenance to Sparks who was himself on duty.
“What’s doing, sir?” he asked the radio chief.
“Well, we haven’t picked up your particular S O S; but there is trouble somewhere dead ahead.”
“I can feel that the engines are increasing speed, sir,” Belding said. “Does it mean that we may have a scrap with a sure-enough Hun?”
“The message sounds like it,” admitted the radio man softly. “There’ll be trouble, I reckon. You’ll hear all about it, soon enough.”
Commander Lang himself appeared on the bridge, and this was a surprisingly early hour for him. Other officers gathered, and there began a somewhat excited conference. The boatswain’s mates failed to pipe the clothes lines triced up. Half an hour earlier than usual the hammocks were ordered stowed. Ikey Rosenmeyer, who loved to sleep till the last minute, was tumbled out unceremoniously and had to stow his hammock in his shirt!
The hammock stowers likewise stopped down the hammock cloths early, and the whole crew had their mess gear served out long before the galley was ready to pipe breakfast. During the meal hour word was passed to shift into uniform instead of work clothes.
“It’s extra drill, I bet,” declared one of the boys pessimistically. “More work for the wicked.”
“There is something doing, sure enough,” Phil Morgan declared. “I think we shall be piped to stations before long.”
He had not seen George Belding then. When the latter reported what he had heard at the radio room Whistler was more than ever confident that there was something of importance about to take place. It was some time, however, before the real fact went abroad among the members of the crew.
The radio had indeed brought news at last of the raider. She was supposed to be lurking near a point not more than two hours’ run ahead of the Colodia. A report from a cattleship had been caught, stating that she was chased just at daybreak by a steamship that was heavily armed with deck guns, and that she surely would have been overtaken by the enemy had fog not shut down and given the cattle boat a chance to zig-zag away on a new course.
The description of the attacking vessel fitted that of the raider, Sea Pigeon. Commander Lang and his officers believed that there was a chance of meeting the German—of approaching her, indeed, unheralded.
There was a good deal of fog about; but overhead the sky was clear and there was the promise of a hot day before noon. Having the approximate latitude and longitude of the cattleship when she sighted the raider, Commander Lang believed the Colodia had a good chance of overtaking the German ship while she was lingering about on the watch for her prey.
The fog was growing thinner, but had by no means entirely disappeared even in the vicinity of the destroyer, when her wireless began to chatter. Sparks sent a messenger on the run to the bridge. This incident visibly increased the excitement of both officers and crew. Word was passed in whispers from the petty officers stationed near the bridge that the call was another S O S.
A second message followed almost immediately. The Colodia’s engines were speeded up. The crew was piped to quarters. The gun crews made ready their initial charges. Everything about the decks was properly stopped down and the destroyer was quickly put into battle trim.
Message after message came from the radio room. Belding came breathlessly to Whistler and Al Torrance with the announcement that it was a sugar ship being attacked, and surely by the raider. Soon the distant reports of guns could be heard.
“If the Susanne can only hold the Heinies off till we get there,” said Belding, who had learned the name of the sugar-laden ship, “we will show them something.”
“We will show them if the German raider isn’t too fast for us,” responded Al. “They say this Sea Pigeon is mighty fast and a pretty nifty boat into the bargain.”
“The old Colodia will show her,” said Whistler with confidence. “Just give us a chance!”
The destroyer plowed on through both sea and fog, while the rumble of the guns grew in magnitude. Whether much damage was being done or not, a good many shots were exchanged by the combatants. It might have been a veritable naval engagement.
The fog swirled about the bows of the Colodia, and the lookouts strained their eyes to catch the first glimpse of the fighting ships. As the fog was thinning from above, the watchers in the tops had the best chance of first sighting the sugar ship and the raider that had attacked her.
A wireless transmitted news of the fight as it progressed. The Germans had not yet succeeded in putting the merchant ship’s radio out of commission. In response, the destroyer had assured the Susanne of her own approach.
“Hold on! We are coming!” the Colodia’s radio had sent forth.
“Enemy half mile off. Steaming two knots to our one,” came the response from the sugar ship.
“Fight it out! We are coming!” repeated Sparks from the destroyer.
“Shell has burst abaft the afterhouse companion. Two of after gun crew killed. Volunteers take their places. We have put a shell through enemy’s upperworks.”
“Great! Keep it up!” chattered the Colodia’s radio.
“Another shell has reached us aft. Women and children sent forward to forecastle.”
The final sentence, read aloud by an officer from the bridge, excited the crew of the Colodia to the utmost.
The American seamen were spurred to fighting pitch now. Their only desire was to get at the raider and her crew.
“It’s a running fight between her and the Susanne,” Morgan said to Al Torrance. “Otherwise the German shells might have reached the sugar ship’s engines before this.”
“Think of them shelling that merchant ship that has women passengers aboard!” groaned Al. “What can those Germans be thinking of? What will happen to them after this war is over?”
“They all believe they are going to win,” Belding said gloomily. “That is what is the matter. And if they should, the whole world will be treated just as ruthlessly as the Germans please.”
“Don’t talk that way! Don’t talk that way!” shouted Al. “I won’t listen to such a possibility! They can’t win this war, and that’s all there is to it!”
“Quiet, there,” admonished the voice of an officer, and the boys subsided to whispered comments, one to the other.
Again and again the wireless chattered the cry for help. The guns thundered ahead. Suddenly there arose a rosy light in the sky, spreading through the fog in a wide wave of color.
“She’s blown up!” was the general and hopeless ejaculation from the crew of the destroyer.
“Her engines went that time, sure enough—and her boilers, too,” groaned Ensign MacMasters, who chanced to stand near the gun crew to which Whistler and Al belonged and where Belding was stationed in reserve. “She’s helpless now. If we don’t get there soon——”
There were no more radio messages. The calls to the Susanne were not answered. The melting fog soon gave the lookouts a clearer view ahead.
“Steamship tops and rigging in sight, sir!” was the cry to the bridge. Then, a minute later: “She’s on fire, sir, and sinking by the stern.”
“Ah!” muttered Ensign MacMasters. “We are too late again!”
In a very few minutes the crew of the Colodia—all those above deck, at least—gained a view of the burning ship.
She was completely wrecked at the stern, and it was probably true, as Ensign MacMasters had said, that her engines and boilers had been blown up. She lay helpless and sinking.
All her passengers and her crew had been driven forward by the flames. The bow of the steamship was slanting up into the air at a threatening angle. The men were lowering such boats as there remained from the forward davits.
The Susanne’s bulk, the smoke, and the last shreds of the fog hid the enemy from the view of the destroyer’s crew. But suddenly they saw a high-powered motor-boat appear beside the crippled steamship. Armed men filled it. Two stood up as the boat swung in to the steamship’s side and caught the hanging davit ropes. They hooked these ropes to the launch, fore and aft.
As quickly as one can tell it, the Germans “tailed on” to the ropes and hauled their own boat into the air. In a minute she overhung the rail of the sugar ship and the Germans swarmed out upon her deck.
The forward guns of the Colodia might have thrown shells into this launch, but such missiles would have imperiled the lives of the people on the Susanne.
The Colodia’s officers through their glasses could see the remaining passengers and crew of the sugar ship lined up against the rail under the threatening rifles of the Germans. There was considerable activity on the deck of the sinking ship during the next few minutes.
The destroyer swerved in her course, her commander hoping to get around the Susanne and mark the position of the raider before the motor launch could get away from the sinking ship. But the Germans worked so quickly that this chance was very small indeed. The destroyer was still a long shot away from the exciting scene.
A number of men were seen staggering along the deck of the sugar ship bearing some heavy object. It was hoisted into the launch and then the latter was lowered quickly into the sea, most of the Germans scrambling down as best they might.
“It’s the purser’s strong box!” shouted one of the lookouts in the destroyer’s top. “And they are going to shoot the poor guy, I bet, for not giving up the combination!”
Other members of the Colodia’s company had already observed a man’s figure, with his hands tied behind him, standing at the farther rail of the Susanne. The four last men from the raider’s launch, all ready to descend into the boat, raised their rifles and fired across the deck at the victim. The man fell, and the murderers swarmed down the rope into the launch.
All this the excited crew of the destroyer saw while they were yet too far away to be of any help. Commander Lang might have ordered his guns to open fire; but the danger of hitting the Susanne was too great.
The officer commanding the German launch was too sharp to give the coming destroyer any safe chance of making a hit without damaging the sugar ship. He steered his motor-boat right along the hull of the crippled Susanne, under the shower of flaming débris that had begun to fall, and went out of sight in a cloud of smoke that had settled upon the sea.
This smoke offered a splendid bit of camouflage for the raider and the launch. Up to this point the lookouts in the destroyer’s tops had caught no glimpse of the Sea Pigeon. She was a very wary bird indeed!
The smoke cloud from the burning ship spread across the sea and supplemented the fast dissolving fog in hiding the German craft. But suddenly a lookout hailed the Colodia’s quarter:
“Steamship’s top, sir! Six hundred yards abaft the sinking ship, sir!”
Orders snapped to the forward gun crews. They could see nothing but fog and smoke astern of the Susanne; but their knowledge of elevation, distance, and other gunnery lore, encouraged them to hope for a “strike.”
The guns began to speak, and the shells shrieked over the stern of the sinking steamship, exploding somewhere in the smoke cloud. There followed no shots in reply. The Germans were shy. The thickening smoke shut out again all sight of the Sea Pigeon.
The condition of the Susanne was threatening. Commander Lang dared not consider a pursuit of the German raider when lives were in such peril here.
Two boats were all that had been put out from the sugar ship. Her other small craft were smashed by the shellfire of the raider.
Some forty or more people were gathered in the bows of the Susanne, and they must needs be taken off quickly. The big merchant vessel was surely going down.
Her two boats had already pulled away to a safe distance. Commander Lang would not risk his own small craft near the trembling hull of the Susanne, but swerved the course of the destroyer that she might run in under the high bows of the ill-fated ship.
Signals were passed, and the remaining members of the Susanne’s crew hastened to prepare slings in which to lower the passengers to the destroyer’s deck.
“Volunteers to go up there and help those people! Smart, now!” sang out the executive officer of the Colodia through his trumpet.
Ikey Rosenmeyer and Frenchy Donahue, who were both free, leaped forward at the call. With Seven Knott and two other sailors, they swarmed up to the high bows of the imperiled ship.
The two Seacove boys were well trained in the uses of cordage and in knotting and splicing. They seized a coil of rope and, working together swiftly, safely lowered three women and a wounded man over the rail to the destroyer’s deck before they were piped down from the Susanne.
Even the dead body of the murdered purser was sent aboard the Colodia. The flames were by that time surging upward, and it was almost too hot to stand upon her forward decks. The bows of the ship were being thrust up as her stern sank. At any minute the wreck might plunge beneath the sea.
“Back all!” rose a stentorian voice from the destroyer.
Ikey and Frenchy went over the rail and swarmed down their respective lines. They were guided inboard to the firm deck of the destroyer. The other workers followed. The Colodia backed swiftly away.
Nor was this done a minute too soon. The wreck was already wallowing from side to side like some wounded monster of the sea. The air pressure blew up the forward deck. Had the survivors remained longer they would have been overwhelmed!
A roaring like that of a great exhaust pipe came from the interior of the sugar ship. The sea began to seethe in a whirlpool about her. She stood almost upright on her stern as she sank.
Down, down she went, while the destroyer turned tail and scudded away at top speed. To be caught in that whirlpool would have spelled disaster for even as staunch a craft as the Colodia undoubtedly was.
The Susanne disappeared slowly, with great combers roaring about her. Beaten to a froth, the waves leaped, white-maned, upon her tossing sprit, and finally hid even that from sight. The sea was a cauldron of boiling waters, and that for hundreds of yards around.
The two boats that had escaped from the wreck had been pulled far away. They were loaded heavily, but were not at the time in any danger. The Colodia, therefore, did not swing her nose in their direction.
Instead, she was speeded into the rapidly thinning smoke cloud which covered the sea astern of the sugar ship. There the German raider was somewhere hiding. It was possible that one of the shells from the destroyer might have done her some damage, or might even have struck the motor launch.
These hopes were doomed to disappointment, however. Five minutes after the Susanne was utterly sunk, the smoke was so dissipated that the lookouts on the destroyer could view the ocean for miles about.
In the distance, and reeling off the knots at most surprising speed, was a steam vessel that could be naught else than the Sea Pigeon. She had picked up her motor launch and escaped. The Colodia might have followed and overhauled her in a long chase; but she could not desert the two boatloads of survivors from the sugar ship here in the middle of the Atlantic.
The radio man was sending queries for help for the survivors of the Susanne; but no ship answered nearer than two hundred miles. It was the first duty of the naval vessel to save the helpless, and she could not fight the German pirates and make these people comfortable, too.
So pursuit was abandoned, much to the dissatisfaction of her crew, and the Colodia swung around and approached the two open boats. These, with their cargoes of human freight, were picked up. Then the destroyer was headed into the north, there to meet a Mediterranean-bound steamship that would take off the Susanne’s castaways and leave the naval vessel free again.
Of course the Navy Boys were vastly interested in the experiences of the people from the sunken ship. Few of her crew, and no passengers, had been lost. When the boilers had blown up two of the firemen were killed and several wounded.
The courageous purser who had refused to tell the Germans the combination of the safe in his office, was the only officer killed. In that safe had been the wealth of several passengers. The raider wanted gold more than anything else.
“Just like the pirates of old, I tell you,” Frenchy said to his chums. “Those old fellows used to make their captives walk the plank. Now these Huns line ’em up and shoot them. I only hope we catch and sink that Sea Pigeon, and every German aboard of her!”
“Look out he doesn’t bite you, fellows,” advised Al. “He’s got hydrophobia.”
But they all felt increased anger at the enemy when they had talked with the survivors of the Susanne. Their experience was enough to stir the blood of any listener.
“That Sea Pigeon has got to be caught!” was the assurance of the boys and men of the Colodia’s crew.
The cruise, after this experience, was a much more serious matter to them all than it had been before. As far as the Seacove boys and Belding went, it had become pretty serious in any case. The prime reason for this lay in the message of mystery that the radio men continued, at times, to half catch out of the air.
George Belding confided to Sparks the name Phil Morgan had made out of the uncertain letters which the chief had written down after hearing them repeated in his ear while at the radio instrument. “Redbird”; that seemed plain enough.
“And the Redbird is the ship my folks and Whistler’s sisters are sailing on to Bahia,” explained Belding. “Why, she might be right out yonder, not so many miles away,” and he pointed into the west.
“You mean to say your sister can send Morse?”
“She used to be able to. She wasn’t quick or accurate, but she could get a message over.”
“There is something altogether wrong with this sending,” said the radio man thoughtfully.
“I know it, sir. She wouldn’t know any code. She would probably spell out every letter and word. We only get a part of what is sent. That is, if it is Lilian who is doing this.”
“It is mighty interesting, this ‘ghost talk’,” the chief said slowly. “I can see you are putting altogether too much faith in the possibility that the stuff is real. Why, we often get the most inexplicable sounds out of the air! It is a very long chance that this is a real message, or that it is from your sister, George.”
“It’s a message from somebody and from somewhere; and I’m awfully interested, too,” declared Belding. “I wish you’d let me listen in again.”
“Oh, I’ll do that little thing for you,” agreed Sparks. “If there is nothing much doing in radio in the afternoon watch, come around again.”
With this promise George Belding contented himself. He told Whistler and the other boys he was going to set down every letter of the mystery message that he could comprehend, and see afterward just what could be made out of them—sense or nonsense!
Having delivered the survivors of the Susanne to the greater comforts of an Italian liner bound eastward, the Colodia’s own course was set for the south and west. Her commander and crew hoped to pick up news of the Sea Pigeon once again. At any rate, the German raider had been last seen making off toward the West Indies and the Caribbean.
The destroyer was below the Tropic of Cancer now, and the weather was exceedingly hot. A dress of dungaree trousers and sleeveless undershirt was the most popular uniform forward of the bridge, decided Donahue.
“The brass hats who have to fairly live in their uniforms are greatly to be pitied.”
Drills were not pushed, and many duties became merely a matter of form.
Yet there was a very serious train of thought in the minds of the Seacove boys and George Belding, as has been shown. There had been uncertainty enough regarding the voyage of the Redbird to Bahia; but since the beginning of what the radio men called the “ghost talk” out of the air, the five friends had all felt a greater measure of anxiety.
Of course, it was by no means certain that these letters in Morse that suggested the name Redbird had anything to do with Mr. Belding’s ship and her company. Yet, not having heard in any form from the party bound for Bahia since the ship left New York, it was not strange that George Belding and Phil Morgan, at least, should be especially troubled in their minds.
During the afternoon watch on this day in which George had gone to Mr. Sparks again, the young fellow got relief and approached the radio room. The chief was off duty and one of his assistants was at the instrument. But the older man was lolling in the doorway and welcomed Belding with a smile.
“Jim, here,” said Sparks, nodding to the student at the instrument, “was just telling me ‘ghost talk’ is coming over again. He says he gets ‘Colodia’ as clear as can be.”
“My goodness! Then somebody is trying to call us, Mr. Sparks!” murmured Belding.
“I don’t know. I’ve been keeping track, busy as we have been for a couple of days. I really think there is some attempt to put a message over; but whether it is for fun or serious, I would not dare state. Or whether it is meant for us or not. It isn’t the same message each time.”
“But you do believe that somebody is trying—or something?”
“‘Something’ is good,” growled Sparks. “I’ve made out ‘Colodia’ more than a few times myself. And I agree that the letters you caught the last time you were listening in, and which I heard myself, may spell ‘Redbird’. Then, you know, you said you heard ‘help.’”
“Well, I did!” snorted Belding.
The radio chief pushed a square bit of paper into his hand. On it were set down without spacing of any kind the following line of letters:
“c,o,l,o,d,i,a,h,e,l,p,r,e,d,b,i,r,d,l,b.”
“I will be honest with you, George,” he said, watching closely the flushing face of the youth. “I really got those letters not half an hour ago. They were repeated in just that order several times. What do you make out of them?”
Belding’s excitement was growing momentarily. He seized Sparks’ pencil and wrote under the row of letters swiftly and surely:
“Colodia—Help—Redbird—L.B.”
The chief nodded. “‘L. B.’ being your sister’s initials, eh?”
“Yes, sir,” cried George breathlessly. “Lilian Belding.”
“Get over there on the bench. Jim will give you the harness. Listen in and see what you can make of it now,” said Sparks, himself excited.
George slid on to the bench and Jim handed him the receivers and strap. The youth fitted the discs to his ears, settled himself on the seat, and opened the key. As usual the static sputtered in the receivers for a little. He tuned down to the short waves and the strange, grating sounds began.
It was very bad Morse—clumsy and irregular; but that it was Morse, Belding was confident. There was something wrong either with the sender or with the instrument sending.
Belding seized the pad of scratch paper and poised his pencil. For a few moments the “ghost talk” ceased. Was it all over for the time? He waited impatiently, growing hot and cold with nervousness.
There were plenty of other wave-sounds in the air, had he cared to listen to them. But he knew the monotonous and rasping letters—on a lower plane, even, than the commercial waves—were carried only at the level to which he had tuned the instrument.
Suddenly: “Colodia! Colodia! Colodia!”
The words were rapped out harshly but briskly—each letter plainly to be read. Then Belding began to set down the unevenly sent letters as he could make them out, with a dash where he failed to catch the letter intended:
“c,o,l,o,d,i,a,h,e,l,p,g,e,t,—,a,n,—,s,—,i,z,—,d,r,e,d,b,i,r,d,—,o,r,b,—,—,i,a,h,e,l,p,l,b,e,l,d,i,—,—.”
George could not stop then to see whether these letters made any sense or not. He believed the main trouble with the message was that the sender used no punctuation.
For a brief time the mystery ceased. Then again the sounds broke out—the same clumsy, uncertain Morse; so bad, indeed, that at first the listener could make out a letter only now and then:
“l,—,—,—,—,l,—,n,g,—,—,—,a,—,e,r,e,—,b,i,r,—,—,a,i,n,—,e,d,—,—,t,m,—,—,t,i,n,—,g,e,r,—,—,n,s,s,e,i,z,e,d,s,—,i,—h,e,l,p.”
There was silence again as far as the “ghost talk” was concerned. Belding waited with his pencil poised over the paper.
His eyes meanwhile scanned the first list of letters he had set down. At first glance he believed he made out the first three words in the message. They were, “Colodia,help,get.” After the break and several disconnected letters the word “redbird” fairly leaped at him from the page. Then, after a few misses and letters that made no sense, he got “help” again. Then he saw as clear as day: “L.Belding”—his sister’s signature!
“Colodia—help—get—Redbird—help—L.Belding.”
The young fellow shook all over as he sat there before the radio instrument. This was a message from his sister, Lilian. Nothing could thereafter shake his belief in this statement. And that she and the Redbird were in peril Belding was positive.
The second combination of letters offered fewer understandable words than the first, or so it seemed to Belding at that moment. The beginning of this second message was entirely indistinguishable, but toward the end he got two words complete—“seized” and “help.”
Altogether he was assured that he had guessed the main trouble with the sender of these strange messages. The words were all run together and the awkward and uneven sending made the unpunctuated words very hard to understand.
Sparks touched him on the shoulder. He had a paper in his hand that a messenger had just brought. It was a radio that must be sent at once.
“Let me at it for a minute, son,” the radio chief said. “Here’s a report for headquarters’ base. Did you get anything?”
“I—I don’t know,” murmured George, giving place to the man. He left the room, taking with him the paper on which he had penciled the broken messages.
Secretly he was confident that he had heard a call over the radio for help and that his sister Lilian, on the Redbird, was sending it.
He wanted to see Philip Morgan about it—to show the leader of the Seacove Navy Boys this paper with the two cryptograms he had picked out of the air. Like Al Torrance, Ikey Rosenmeyer, and Frenchy Donahue, George had come by this time to look upon Phil Morgan as a fellow of parts. Phil would be able to help him make these messages out, if anybody could!
But he could have no time with Whistler until second dog watch that evening. Then he got the Seacove youth aside and showed him what he had managed to set down in letters from the “ghost talk” he had listened in on that afternoon.
Whistler did not know a thing about Morse, or much about radio, but he had a sharp eye and a clear head. Belding had translated enough words of both messages to suggest the general trend of them.
“How do you know where the letters ‘break’ if you can’t hear all the dots and dashes?” Whistler first asked, scanning the paper seriously. “That appears curious to me.”
“Not in this case. If it is Lil sending—or whoever it is—the sender is so unfamiliar with the Morse American code that there is a hesitation between the letters. Why, I thought at first the message was in Continental code, which is, you know, entirely different from American.”
“It’s all news to me, old boy. Go on.”
“Why, there’s nothing more. If I could hear those words repeated several times I reckon I’d get most of the letters—and get them straight.”
“I see,” murmured his friend. “And as it is, you have got a good many of the words, only you haven’t noticed it.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, it is plain,” said Whistler, “that several of the same words are used in both messages.”
“Yes. ‘Help’, ‘Colodia’, ‘Redbird’.”
“More than those,” said Whistler. “See! You have ‘seized’ plain as the nose on your face in the second set of letters.”
“I see that.”
“And there it is in the first list,” and Whistler pointed as he spoke to a combination of letters and blanks almost immediately following “Colodia—Help—Get.” “There is ‘s-e-i-z-ed’, plain enough. And, yes, by Jove! There is ‘redbird’ in the second message. Look here, old man! Let me go through this.”
“That is what I want you to do,” responded Belding excitedly.
“In the beginning the message surely says: ‘Colodia! Help! Get!——No! That should not be ‘getmans’ that ‘seized Redbird’. No, no! There is the same combination in the lower message. It is ‘ger’ down there, not ‘get’,” muttered Whistler, vastly interested now.
With pencil and paper he set to work. In five minutes he offered Belding the following paragraph as a translation in full of the first message:
“Colodia! Help! Germans seized Redbird for Bahia. Help!—L. Belding.”
“Oh, Whistler, you’ve got it! And it is as we have feared. Those papers that Emil Eberhardt stole from me back in England have played the dickens with the Redbird and the folks. I am sure it is Lil trying to call me—the splendid kid that she is!”
“Hold on! Hold on!” Whistler said, but encouragingly. “Let’s get the other message, too.”
He set to work on that; but the first of it baffled him. He could only begin to make it out where the word “Redbird” occurred. From that place on, it was not so difficult: “Redbird painted out—mutiny—Germans seized ship—Help.” This second message was not signed with Lilian Belding’s name or her initials, but George knew the sending to have been the same as that of the first call for help.
“But, Phil!” gasped the New York youth, “we don’t know a living thing about where the Redbird is, or what is happening to our folks.”
“You’d think she would have tried to tell their situation in the message,” rejoined Whistler slowly.
“If she knew. She’s a girl, and wouldn’t be likely to interest herself much in navigation.”
“Tut, tut, my boy! Everybody at sea takes an interest in the course of the ship and her speed. Of course they do. Wait! Here is the abbreviation for longitude right here—‘long.’ Two blanks for the figures you did not catch, George, my boy!”
“Do you think so?” murmured his friend.
Whistler wrote it “Lat.—,—, long.—,—.” Then he had an inspiration and put in “name” before “Redbird.”
“There we have it in full—except for the figures of the Redbird’s position. Look out for them next time, George. They are important.”
“Next time, Morgan?” gasped George Belding, excitedly.
“Certainly. It stands to reason your sister is sending out messages for help whenever she gets a chance at the radio instrument on the Redbird. And take it from me, the most important thing she is trying to put over is the position of the ship from day to day. They take the sun at noon, and as soon afterward as she can, Lilian gets to the radio and sends that information into the air.
“Believe me, George, you have some smart sister, and no mistake!” said Whistler Morgan in much admiration.
George Belding was for running right off to the radio chief, Mr. Sparks, to ask another chance to listen in on the wireless for further messages from the Redbird. The supposition that Germans in her crew had mutinied and seized his father’s ship became at once a certainty in George’s mind.
Whistler, however, with his usual cautiousness, steadied his friend.
“There is no use making such an application now, George,” he said. “There will be none of this ‘ghost-talk’ in the air at this hour.”
“Oh!”
“You know, they only hear those messages in the afternoon watch. That is the only time, in all probability, that your sister can get to the radio. The rest of the time, perhaps, the regular radio man is on duty, and he is probably in league with the mutineers.”
“My goodness, Phil!” ejaculated Belding, “that word ‘mutineers’ makes me tremble.”
“It suggests the rough stuff, all right,” agreed the Seacove lad. “I hope my sisters and your folks will not be treated too outrageously by the gang that has got possession of your father’s ship.”
“If we could only find them! We’re tied here on this old iron pot—”
“Hold on! Don’t malign the Colodia. We may be glad for their sakes that we are on this destroyer.”
“I don’t see it. I wish I was on the Redbird.”
“A fat chance! With those Germans committing acts of barratry like painting out the Redbird’s name! That shows they are desperate men. And what could we do to them if we were in their power?”
“What help can we give the folks from this distance?” groaned Belding.
“This is a matter that will have to be brought to the attention of the Old Man, George. I am going to speak to Mr. MacMasters and ask him to get us a chance to interview Commander Lang.”
“Will he listen to us, do you think?”
“Of course he will,” said Whistler with confidence.
The two friends could scarcely sleep in their watch below, and in the morning their anxiety was apparent to the other boys.
Whistler watched for his chance and spoke to Ensign MacMasters. The ensign would do anything within reason for Whistler and his friends. He considered the four Seacove lads about the finest boys aboard the Colodia.
Upon hearing the story of the mystery message he became vastly interested. He went to see Sparks first of all, and then hurried to Commander Lang’s cabin. One reason why Mr. MacMasters was so eager to see the commander was because Sparks had told him that during the previous evening an operator at the Weather Bureau station at Arlington, Virginia, had asked the Colodia’s chief radio man:
“Have you caught message being put out for Colodia?”
While a radio man on the troopship Kinkadia demanded:
“Anybody named Belding on Colodia? He appears to be wanted by a ham.”
Which was not a very respectful way of referring to George’s sister. It showed, however, that Lilian’s uncertain sending was attracting attention at several points.
It was mid-forenoon before the two friends were called into the presence of Commander Lang. Belding was bashful and allowed Whistler to do most of the talking. And he was impressed by the ease and coolness with which his friend went about the matter.
Commander Lang met Phil Morgan as he would have met another man. There was nothing “kiddish about Whistler,” Al had once said. The commander of the Colodia examined the messages as the boys believed they were intended to read. He at once approved the application of George Belding to be attached to the radio squad until further notice. He sent for Sparks and heard his story of the mystery message. In every way he showed an acute interest in the affair.
If the Redbird was somewhere at sea in charge of mutineers—Germans at that!—to find her would be a task for the Colodia. But as Whistler had immediately seen, it was agreed that to discover the course of the Redbird and her daily position by the sun were the most important points.
The boys were most impatient for the time to come when George would take his “trick” at the radio instrument again. This would not be until the afternoon watch, when the radio man then on duty had orders to give the instrument over to George if the “ghost-talk” again was heard.
It had been decided that George should try to reply to the mysterious call. By spelling out the name of his father’s ship, the Redbird, or calling Lilian Belding by name, it might be possible to communicate with the vessel and send a word of courage to the passengers. The desire was to encourage the sender of the strange message to repeat again and again the Redbird’s situation.
It was only possible to guess at the course of the ship bound for Bahia, as well as her present position. Lilian Belding had doubtless called for the Colodia because her brother and Whistler Morgan served on that naval vessel, not because she had any idea as to where the destroyer was.
The two vessels might be a desperately long distance apart. That fact could not be overlooked. The boys were in a fever of expectation.
As it drew near eight bells of the forenoon watch there came a message by wireless that was even more exciting for most of the crew than the mystery of the “ghost-talk.”
“An S O S!” whispered the messenger to George Belding as he darted from the radio station to the bridge.
Swiftly the watch officer read the message: “H. M. S. S. Ferret, from Porto Rico for Liverpool, attacked by German cruiser Sea Pigeon, lat. twenty-one, long. fifty-eight. S O S.”
The exciting information was instantly communicated two ways—to the commander’s cabin and to the chief engineer. The Colodia leaped forward, conned on her new course at once. They were off in another race to overtake the elusive German raider—and this time, perhaps, to find her.
“But we may be going right away from the Redbird!” Belding complained to the other boys.
“On the other hand, we don’t know but it may be taking us right toward your father’s vessel,” Whistler said, trying to comfort his friend.
He felt worried himself about it. There would be no chance to try to reach the Redbird by radio during the afternoon watch. Whistler was just as anxious as Belding; only he kept these feelings much more to himself.
The radio sparked message after message to and from the British ship. The Colodia was the only naval craft within possible reach of the spot from which the call came, although there were both British cruisers and torpedo boats on the Bermuda and Bahama stations.
But they were heavy craft, and it would have taken days for a boat from either station to reach the point indicated by the Ferret. Whereas, with good fortune, the American destroyer’s engines would drive her to the spot in three hours.
Could the British merchant vessel keep up the unequal fight for that length of time? The German must have already engaged her, or the radio message from the Ferret as first transmitted would not have been so exact.
From out of the air came messages from all directions urging the Colodia on. The Ferret’s S O S and the destroyer’s answer had been picked up by both ship and land stations. Ships long out of range, it would seem, became interested in the attempt to “get” the raider which had already cut such a swath among shipping in the Atlantic.
Remembering the fate of the Susanne, the crew of the Colodia had some reason for believing that this dash of the good destroyer was a “long shot.” It seemed scarcely possible that she would arrive at the scene of the fight in time to save the merchant ship from complete disaster.
Yet the radio messages were encouraging. After an hour the Ferret reported no serious damage done and that they had put two shells aboard their pursuer from their well-manned deck guns.
“Well done, Ferret!” flashed the destroyer’s radio. “Keep up the good work.”
Yet every moment it was expected aboard the Colodia that either the wireless on the steamship would be destroyed, or she would report serious injury to her machinery. The raider would, of course, strive to place her shells where they would utterly cripple her victim—either under the stern and smash the propellers, or amidships and burst boilers or wreck engines.
The Colodia’s crew were ordered to stations, more for the sake of keeping order on deck than for aught else. Every man who could be spared from below was ranged along the decks. Gun covers were removed, breech blocks looked to, and every man was keyed to a high pitch.
“Talk about efficiency!” growled Ensign MacMasters. “We’ve got it. Just because the Germans have been abusing the word is no reason why we should not properly use it. They are often efficient to a useless end; but we’ll show that sea-raider, if we get a chance, that the old Colodia is more efficient than a German ever dared be!”
The destroyer plowed on and on, while every minute that elapsed without their hearing that the Ferret was wrecked encouraged hope. Now and again word came that the British ship, with dogged persistency, was holding out. She had been hit now several times, and the Sea Pigeon was reported as being almost on top of her. Still she was providentially saved from disaster.
Through the heat of a tropical noontide the destroyer rushed on toward the fight. The crew looked for no shelter now, they only desired to see the smoke of the guns ahead.
And before six bells of the afternoon watch they had the desire of their eyes! The lookouts began to yell the glad tidings to the bridge, and the crew took up the news with a mighty shout.
The wind was against their hearing the guns at first, but finally the thundering roll of the weapons reached the ears of the Americans. The Colodia seemed to increase her speed. The smoke rolled back from her stacks and lay flat along the sea as though painted there with one stroke of a giant brush.
Within a few minutes they could see balloons of smoke billowing up ahead, but these were from no ship afire. They were the announcement of gun discharges.
On the destroyer tore through the quiet sea. The lookouts hailed for the upperworks of the Ferret. Another message came by radio that the attacked steamship had seen and hailed with delight her rescuer.
The explosion of the guns ahead brought joy to the hearts of the Colodia’s crew. There was the prospect of a real fight! The smoke of the raider was announced. The destroyer’s course was swerved ever so slightly that she might pass the battered Ferret and draw the fire of the German from the merchant ship.
Then the order was given, and her own guns began to speak. It was at long range, but the marksmanship of American gun crews had become really wonderful. The high, shrieking shells sought out the German ship, and within the first dozen sent over, the radio man on the Ferret reported a “strike.” One of the Sea Pigeon’s smokestacks was carried away!
The fight was on. The Americans hoped to get near enough to the German boat to bring her to terms within a very short time.
The excitement of the dash for the embattling ships left the Colodia’s company no thought for anything else. Even dinner had been half-neglected, although that came early in the race.
As for weather indications or the like, nobody thought of such things. And here suddenly appeared a phenomenon that bade fair to help the Germans and place the destroyer in a less confident position.
The American ship had arrived just in time to save the Ferret; her upperworks were badly wrecked although providentially the wireless outfit of the British ship was not crippled.
One of her guns was put out of commission and a shell under the stern had knocked out the propeller just as the Colodia entered the fight. She swung now to the slow current, and as the destroyer rushed past her the British crew could only cheer her on. Their work was done—and done well!
But here came a cloud rolling along the surface of the sea from the south that offered shelter for the raider, the prow of which was already turned in that direction. The German had no intention of remaining to fight the battle out with the guns of the destroyer.
The raider was not, of course, any match for the American naval vessel. It was the part of wisdom for her to run. Besides, she was already crippled, and it would have been but a matter of a few minutes before she would either have to capitulate or be sunk had she continued in the fight. The Colodia might even have kept out of range of the raider’s guns, circled about the German, and destroyed her at pleasure. Or she could have sent a torpedo against the pirate ship and blown her to bits.
Here, however, fortune helped the enemy. The cloud of fog laid along the surface of the sea offered the Sea Pigeon refuge. She proved again that she was a “wary bird!”
Into the cloud she dashed, and where she went after that—although the fog bank was low—the lookouts of the Colodia could not tell.
“If we only had a hydroplane to send up!” said Whistler Morgan to his chums. “The time will come when every destroyer will have its pair of hydroplanes for observation. From a thousand feet up, that fog would never shelter the raider. The hydroplane could signal us the raider’s position and we’d follow her just as though it were clear weather.”
In this case, however, the commander of the destroyer did not wish to desert the Ferret until he had learned her condition. The Colodia described a wide circle and steamed back within hailing distance of the crippled British ship.
Fortunately there were no women or other passengers aboard this vessel. Her wounded were few, too. The hull of the craft had not suffered. Already her machinists were at work on the propeller. They had new blades in the hold, and the end of the shaft was not injured. They proposed to sweat on the new propeller, make such other repairs as were necessary, and then attempt to limp into the Bermuda station under her own steam.
“You can’t beat those fellows!” said Ensign MacMasters admiringly. “The merchant sailors nowadays have more to face than we do, and with less chance of getting safely out of a scrimmage. I wouldn’t want to be hobbling along in that cripple to the Bermudas with that German pirate in the vicinity.”
Just where the Sea Pigeon had gone behind the fog they could only surmise. But Commander Lang ordered a course south by west, hoping that the raider would turn up again.
Phil Morgan and George Belding had time to think of the Redbird and her precious freight once more. It was little satisfaction for either to know that Sparks and his assistants were on the lookout for messages from the sailing ship.
Nothing came up that night to give the anxious boys any satisfaction. Sparks reported nothing in the morning. But as the hour drew near when the mysterious messages usually came over, both Belding and Whistler Morgan hung about the door of the radio room.
The radio chief knew just how anxious they were and he did not scold them. Soon after dinner he sent George to the bench to try to pick up the uncertain sounds that he believed came from the Redbird’s wireless.
George could only get a letter now and then. The sending—if it was it—was weaker than before. In desperation the youth began to send himself:
“I,I,I, (aye,aye,aye) Colodia!”
He repeated this over and over again. An hour passed before he got what seemed to be a direct answer. Then:
“Colodia! Help! Redbird!”
Belding fairly shouted aloud in his excitement. But when he turned to see Mr. Sparks and the others at the door watching him, he subsided and began to send calmly:
“Give position! Give position! Redbird, give position!”
This went on for some time, and then he caught the grating and uncertain sound of what he was confident was his sister’s sending. He tuned his instrument up and down the scale before getting the best adjustment. Out of the air he finally received letters which he wrote down falteringly and passed to Mr. Sparks and Whistler. While the message was being repeated the radio man and Phil Morgan made out the following paragraph:
“Ship Redbird for Bahia seized by German mutineers. Position, lat. 17, long. 59. Help!—L. Belding.”
“It’s Lilian, all right! Hurray!” exclaimed Whistler, and Belding heard him.
The latter was now repeating, again and again, the announcement that the Colodia heard the message and was coming. Sparks hurried away to seek Commander Lang with the news. The position of the sailing ship was within easy reach of the destroyer.
But the messages stopped suddenly. Not another word came from the Redbird. Belding came away from the instrument at last, feeling anything but hopeful.
“Something’s happened to her,” he whispered to Morgan. “I fear Lilian has got into trouble by her work at the Redbird’s wireless. What do you think, Phil?”
“I am not going to lose hope. We will find the ship and rescue our folks from the mutineers. Don’t doubt it, George!”
It was difficult to keep up their courage, however, when there was so much uncertainty regarding the sailing ship’s condition. It might be, too, that the latitude and longitude was several points off. A full degree is sixty miles, and sixty miles is a long way across the ocean!
Just before dark they raised the smoke of a steamer ahead and sailing athwart the destroyer’s course. This surely could not be the Redbird; yet the destroyer could not allow the stranger to pass without investigation.
Her radio could get no answer from the ship. It seemed as though the stranger was running away from the Colodia. Naturally suspicion was aroused in the minds of the commander that it was the Sea Pigeon.
But it became a blind chase as night fell upon them. They saw no lights, and the tropical night comes so suddenly that to have overtaken the steamship before dark was an utter impossibility. The destroyer swung back into her direct course for the point from which the last radio message of the Redbird was supposed to have come.