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 third volume of the series, “Navy Boys Behind the Big Guns; Or,
Sinking the German U-Boats,” took our heroes into perils and adventures
which they will long remember, for they included work in the gun turrets
of the _Kennebunk_, a wreck that threatened the lives of all four chums,
a mix-up with German spies, and finally a record trip across the
Atlantic by which the huge superdreadnaught arrived at the rendezvous in
time to take part in a naval engagement which put a part of the Hun navy
to flight.
Now the four friends were back on the _Colodia_ which was doing patrol
duty off the English and French coasts, and convoying troop and food
ships through the submarine and mine zones. The base of the squadron of
which the destroyer was a member was at this English port, on the
hillside above which Philip Morgan, Alfred Torrance, Michael Donahue and
Ikey Rosenmeyer have been introduced just as they met the American
sailor lad, George Belding, and his doubtful friend, the giant
ex-coster, “Willum” Johnson.
“Keep cool,” Whistler urged again, as the Zeppelin sailed inland. “There
is no use running----”
His further speech was smothered by a terrific explosion from the port
below. A lurid burst of flame, stronger than the sunlight, shot into the
air where a wharf and warehouse had been. Smoke followed, instantly
hiding the mark the bomb from the Zeppelin had found.
This daylight raid was the boldest the Germans had attempted. The enemy
must have supposed the fog was over the land as well as the sea, or he
would never have risked the attack.
Again a nerve-racking explosion following a flash of light that seared
their eyeballs, and the middle of the town--the market place--was
shrouded by thick smoke.
“The dirty ’ounds!” bawled the British seaman, suddenly finding his
voice. “The dirty ’ounds! They’re killin’ women an’ kids down there!
Lemme get my bloomin’ ’ands on ’em!”
He dropped George Belding’s collar at last and would have started in a
clumsy run down the hill. It was Whistler who stopped him, with a
two-handed grip on the Englishman’s collar now.
“What good would you be down there, man?” the American youth demanded.
“You’d only get yours, too, maybe. Those bombs are falling two or three
thousand feet.”
“Argh!” growled Willum Johnson, shaking his huge fists in the air, his
face raised to the coming Zeppelin. The growl was animal-like, not
human. “Argh! Lemme get ’em----”
A third bomb exploded. A big house below them, half way down the
hillside, disappeared. It was as though a monstrous sponge had been
wiped across that spot and erased the building!
“Oh! Look out! Look out!” sobbed Frenchy, and covered his eyes with his
hands.
His chum Ikey shook beside him, but could not close his eyes to the
horror.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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