Navy boys to the rescue : $b or, Answering the wireless call for helpDavidson, Halsey
General
Navy boys to the rescue : $b or, Answering the wireless call for help
Davidson, Halsey
United States. Navy -- Juvenile fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations -- Juvenile fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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