The campaign for the Liberty bonds brought Cappy an appointment from the mayor as captain of a corps of volunteer bond salesmen to work the wholesale lumber and shipping trade, and for three weeks the old gentleman was as busy as the proverbial one-armed paper hanger with the itch. He was obsessed with a fear that the bond issue would be under-subscribed by about a billion and a half and result in the United States of America being accorded a hearty Teutonic horse laugh. Consequently he made five separate subscriptions on his own account, and just before the lists closed on the last day he was again overcome with apprehension and subscribed for an additional ten thousand dollars' worth for his grandson! When the result of the Liberty-bond campaign was made known he almost wept with joy and gave a wonderful dinner to his corps of salesmen, after which he went down to his ranch to rest for a week and see what Sam Daniels was up to.
The morning he returned to town, prepared to leap, heart and soul into the hundred-million-dollar Red Cross drive, he had a visit from his port captain, Michael J. Murphy.
“Well, sir,” Murphy announced, “I've cleaned up all the little details in my department, your new port captain is on the job, and I'm about to go over to the naval training station on Goat Island and hold up my hand again. But before I go, sir, I want to express to you something of what I feel for what you've done for me and mine.”
“Tut, tut. Not another peep out of you, sir!” Cappy commanded. To be thanked for anything always made him feel uncomfortable. “What branch of the service do you hope to get into, Mike?”
“I want to get aboard a destroyer, sir, though they're the divil an' all to live aboard. They offer the best chance for action. Patrolling the submarine zone, you know.”
“Gosh,” Cappy groaned; “everybody's got the submarines on the brain, and I'm tagging along with the rest. Mike, I swear I can't sleep nights, thinking of this war. It breaks my heart to realize I'm out of it. And because I'm a shipping man, naturally my fool brain runs to submarines and how to control them. Mike, I have a great yearning to sink a submarine; the screams of those scoundrels aboard her would be music to my ears.”
“It's a serious problem,” Murphy declared soberly; “but I'm hoping our Yankee ingenuity will solve it.”
“Well, we haven't done it to date, and in the meantime all the nut inventors in the world are sending their nut ideas in to the National Council of Defense. Of course I have a bright idea too. I'm a great hand at hatching cute schemes, you know. However, I differ from the average submarine nut in this—that I want to try out my theory in practice before submitting it to an expectant world. Still, I'd need you to help me; and now that you're going into the navy I suppose I'll have to forget it.”
“I seem to remember a scheme of yours that resulted in the capture of a submarine last year,” Murphy reminded the old man. “That was a bully scheme, and I'm willing to wager that the head which produced it can produce another just as good. Tell me your plan for eliminating submarines, Mr. Ricks.”
“My scheme doesn't contemplate a continuous performance,” Cappy hastened to explain, “but it might work out once or twice—and in this great international emergency anything is worth trying once. I could demonstrate my theory in about two months—with your help.”
“Then,” declared Michael J. Murphy, “I'll wait until you give the demonstration before enlisting in the navy.”
“Bully for you, Mike! I'll declare Terry Reardon in on the experiment also, for the reason that one of the ingredients required is a chief engineer with courage to spare. Now then, for my scheme: Do you know theCosta Rica?”
“That old steamer that used to run to Panama for the Pacific Mail?”
“The same.”
“What about her?”
“She's in the bone yard—laid up for keeps, Mike. Her plates are so thin and soft the least jar would punch a hole in her; she's wrecked and strained from fifty years of service; her engines are worn out, her boilers are burned out, her gear is antiquated, and even in these times of abnormal freight rates she's too far gone to patch up and keep running. They kicked her up in the mud of Oakland Inner Harbor yesterday, and there she'll be stripped of everything of value and left to rot. My plan, Mike, is to buy the oldCosta Ricafor a couple of thousand dollars, turn Terence Reardon and his gang loose on her engines and boilers for a couple of weeks and take the old coffin out for one final voyage. She can make eight or nine knots in good weather, and if she's torpedoed the loss will be trifling. Will you run the risk and take her out for me, Mike?”
“Yes, sir. What for?”
“As a decoy.”
“I don't understand.”
“We'll put a hand-picked crew aboard her, Mike; we'll arm her fore and aft with six-inch guns, which we can readily get from the navy now that it's the fashion to arm merchantmen; and then go cruising in the submarine zone. You can pick up a few old navy men for a gun crew and train some of the Costa Rica's crew, can't you?”
“If we can get somebody to give me the range and manage to get the gun loaded somehow, I'll do the gun pointing; with half a chance I'll guarantee results.”
“And that is exactly what I plan to give you—half a chance,” Cappy declared enthusiastically. “The Costa Rica isn't worth two hoots in a hollow, but she still looks enough like a steamer to attract submarines; and during this fine summer weather we can chance a final voyage with the old wreck.”
“Where do you get this 'we' stuff, Mr. Ricks?” Mike Murphy queried bluntly. “You're not figuring on going to sea in that coffin, are you?”
“I most certainly am so figuring. I take my fun where I find it, Mike, and if I'm to plan and pay for this experiment—then, by gravy, I'm going to be on deck to watch it work out if it's the last act of my sinful career.”
“But if they fire on us you may be killed.”
“We'll be firm' back at 'em, won't we? And if I'm killed in action, won't that be a fitting finish for a Ricks?”
“We may be afloat in an open boat for a week. I don't want you to die of exposure, sir.”
“Forget it, Mike! I've been charged off to profit and loss for so many years it makes me ill to think of them. And you remember, my dear Mike,
“'To every man upon this earthDeath cometh soon or late;And how can man die betterThan facing fearful oddsFor the ashes of his fathersAnd the temples of his gods?''
Don't argue with me, Mike. My mind is quite made up. I'm going into action in this war, for, as I said before, I'll try anything once—particularly when it isn't very expensive and I can afford the luxury. We're going to buy theCosta Rica, take her into the submarine zone and lose her, but, by the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, we'll take a submarine with us!”
“Not if the German sees us first.”
Cappy leaned forward and laid his index finger impressively on Michael J. Murphy's knee. “That's the only way we can hope to win,” he declared. “We must make certain the submarine sees us first. Mike, a German is a rabid disciple of law and order; anything out of the usual run of things upsets him terribly; he never makes allowance for the unexpected or for the other fellow's point of view. To be more exact, Mike, I figure that German psychology is the only kind of psychology a German can understand. And to tell you the truth, Mike,” he added musingly, “there are blamed few people who can understand mine.”
Michael J. Murphy nodded a vigorous indorsement to this last remark, and Cappy went on: “Do you think any proud and arrogant skipper of a German submarine would ever suspect an American citizen of such a harebrained scheme as the sending out of a rusty, creaking old rattletrap of a steamer that can't get out of her own way, for the avowed purpose of destroying him and his sub? No sir! His microphones will tell him, while he is still totally submerged, that his approaching prey is a slow poke and cannot possibly outrun him; then he'll come up, take a look and clinch his conclusions—after which he will attack.”
“True for you sir. He'll launch his torpedo and dive before I can get a shot at him or correct my range to hit him; then the torpedo will hit us and we'll go up like a shower of mush—probably with half a dozen men killed and nothing accomplished in the way of a return swat.”
“That was the program a few months ago,” Cappy retorted triumphantly. “Have you noticed, however, that since merchantmen have been armed the submarines are more and more prone, when attacking in daylight, to pursue a steamer at a reasonable distance and rake her with shell fire? If a vessel is fired on and her skipper, looking back, notes the position of the submarine and realizes that he cannot possibly outrun her and that she outranges him, what does he do, Mike?”
“He does the sensible thing. Heaves to to avoid loss of life, gets his men into the boats and abandons his ship to the Hun.”
“Precisely! And if the Hun thinks he is not likely to be disturbed for a couple of hours, what does he do?”
“Why,” said Murphy, “he comes aboard, removes all the stores he can—particularly engine oil—and strips the vessel of all her brass, copper and bronze fittings. These metals are very scarce in Germany and they need all they can get in the manufacture of munitions.”
“Correct! And we must bear in mind, Mike, the fact that a German is naturally thrifty; if he can sink a ship with shell fire or bombs set in her bilges he will not waste on her a torpedo that costs from ten to twenty thousand dollars. Now, will he?”
“Well, I wouldn't, Mr. Ricks.”
“Then my plan is absurdly simple. We merely provide a gorgeous opportunity for the enemy; we inculcate in him the idea that he is about to pick a soft one—then: Alas, poor Yorick!”
Michael J. Murphy rose and put on his hat. “Where are you going, Mike?” Cappy demanded.
“I'm going up to the navy yard at Mare Island,” the port captain declared, “to see if I cannot pick up a couple of six-inch rifles of the model they used when I was in the navy. They're obsolete now, but I understand them—and while I'm getting the guns I'll pick up four or five old navy men. Leave it to me, Mr. Ricks.”
“We'll give 'em hell!” shouted Cappy.
“We will!” quoth Michael J. Murphy with conviction.
Two weeks later the oldCosta Rica,looking somewhat youthful in a new coat of black paint and with a huge American flag painted on each topside, slipped quietly out of San Francisco in ballast and for the last time turned her nose toward Panama. In the brief period given him in which to overhaul her interior, Terence P. Reardon had accomplished wonders, and an hour after Mike Murphy had taken his bearings from Point San Pedro and laid out his course the chief came into the chart room to announce that the old girl was doing eight knots and, barring unexpected bad weather, would continue to do it without falling to pieces. “If I could have spint two thousand dollars more on her,” Terence declared, “I believe I could get another knot out av her. Time was whin she could do sixteen.”
Cappy Ricks, enjoying his afternoon cigar in the snug chart room, snorted vigorously. “I don't very often take a notion to throw my money into the sea, Terence,” he reminded his port engineer, “but when I do get that reckless I limit myself to twenty thousand dollars, and that, in round figures, is what this old ruin will stand me about the time the torpedo blows you up on top of the fiddle. However, that is a trifling investment if we succeed in destroying a late-type German submarine with a couple of hundred thousand dollars' worth of torpedoes aboard. As a sporting proposition it's somewhat more expensive than golf, but the excitement makes up for the added cost.”
“The old box is alive with rats and bedbugs,” Murphy complained.
“If they annoy you, Mike, my boy, comfort yourself with the thought that they're all going to be drowned,” Cappy replied gayly.
Slowly the old packet wallowed down the coast, the while her crew, under Mike Murphy's supervision, built gun platforms fore and aft. Following their completion, the two six-inch guns Cappy had succeeded in getting from the navy were lifted out of the hold with the aid of the cargo winch and placed in position, one forward and the other aft. Thereupon the mate took charge of theCosta Rica,while Mike Murphy drilled his crew in range finding and celerity in loading the piece. Pointing the gun was entirely up to Murphy and, needless to state, the task was in capable hands, as was frequently demonstrated during target practice as they loafed down the coast.
Upon arrival at Panama theCosta Rica'sbunkers were replenished and an extra supply of sacked coal was piled on deck, for with her patched-up boilers the old steamer was a hog on fuel. Then the mechanics and carpenters and all men not vitally needed aboard for the remainder of the voyage were put ashore and furnished with transportation back to San Francisco by the regular Pacific Mail liner. Next, the name on the bows of theCosta Ricawas painted out, the name boards at each end of her bridge removed and the raised-letter record of her identity and home port chipped off her stern; following which Cappy Ricks, Terence P. Reardon and Michael J. Murphy commended their souls to their Creator, and theCosta Ricaslipped leisurely through the ditch and out into the Caribbean Sea.
Fourteen days later Mike Murphy dropped round to Cappy Ricks' cabin. “We're in the danger zone, sir,” he announced. “And from now on we're liable to meet one of the larger type of U-boats that operate a couple of thousand miles from the base at Zeebrugge.”
“Very well,” Cappy replied calmly. “Whether torpedoed or shelled, your instructions are the same. Forbid the wireless operator to send out a call for help, heave to immediately and get the men into the boats and away from the ship. Terry Reardon will remain on duty in the engine room, provided it isn't wrecked by a torpedo and the engine room crew killed; you and your gun crew will remain aboard and hide in the forecastle if it's action front, and in the auxiliary steering-gear house if it's action rear. I will relieve the quartermaster, take charge of the wheel and direct the action. If I see that there isn't going to be any action we'll put on life preservers, jump overboard and be picked up by our men in the boats. However, something tells me, Mike, that we're going to have a crack at—”
At that very instant something rapped theCosta Ricaterrifically on the starboard side amidships and tore through her with a grinding, wrenching noise, followed by an explosion.
“There's the crack you were speaking of, sir,” Murphy yelled and started for the door. Cappy Ricks grasped him frantically by the arm. “Was that a shell or a torpedo?” he cried. His voice, thin and shrill with age, quavered now with excitement.
“It was a shell,” Murphy answered. “Went through the second cabin.”
“Then that German belongs to Alden P. Ricks,” Cappy declared, and scurried for the pilot house. “Out and into life-boats!” he ordered the quartermaster, and shoved him away from the wheel. “Set her over to slow speed ahead,” he called to the mate, who was standing stupidly, gazing at the white puffs of smoke that marked the position of the submarine two miles off the starboard bow. The mate came to life, jammed over the handle of the marine telegraph and, obeying an order bellowed to him by Mike Murphy from the main deck, abandoned the bridge for the boat deck, there to superintend the task of getting the men away from the ship.
His first thrill of excitement having subsided, Cappy carefully drew the little half curtains on the pilot-house window, leaving a small slit through which he could observe the submarine without being observed himself, for it was no part of his plan to disclose to the enemy the fact that the ship was not entirely deserted—and that the submarine commander should jump to the conclusion that she was deserted by all hands was precisely the condition that Cappy desired to bring about.
Down in the engine room the indomitable Terence Reardon, with one hand on the throttle and one eye on the steam gauge, put theCosta Ricaunder a dead-slow bell; she seemed scarcely to move, yet she had sufficient steerage way to enable Cappy to keep her pointed in the general direction of the submarine, the commander of which, seeing the crew of the Costa Rica scurrying for the boats, contented himself with sending over half a dozen shells for the purpose of hurrying them along; then he ceased firing, and when the boats pulled out from the ship in tow of a motor lifeboat and his powerful glasses showed neither guns nor sign of life upon theCosta Rica'sdecks, he did exactly what Cappy Ricks figured he would do.
He circled warily round his prize, but the absence of frantic wireless calls for help lulled his suspicions, and presently he bore down upon her, hove to two cable lengths abreast the wallowing hulk and watched her fully five minutes for a possible trap, for the absence of any name puzzled him. His suspicions subsided at length, however, the hatch in her turtle deck slid back and men appeared, dragging up a small collapsible boat.
Slowly, slowly—so gradually that it seemed the old vessel was merely drifting, Cappy brought theCosta Ricaround until her bow pointed toward the submarine. Mike Murphy, standing just inside the forecastle door, kept his glance on the slit in the curtains on the pilot-house window-and presently Cappy motioned violently to him.
“To the gun!” ordered the captain. Followed by his gun crew he dashed out of the forecastle and up the companion ladder to the forecastle head. A jerk at a lever connecting a cunningly constructed set of controls, and the false topsides on the forecastle head flopped to the deck, revealing Mike Murphy's six-inch gun. Cappy saw him deflect the gun while another man traversed it; for five seconds his eyes pressed the sight, and when the gun remained motionless Cappy knew that the hull of the submarine was looming fairly on the intersection of the cross wires in the sight. The range was point-blank!
Quick as were Murphy and his crew, however, the gun crew of the submarine was quicker. Before theCosta Rica'sgun was properly laid, a shell from the submarine flew a foot over the heads of the Murphyites and burst fifty yards beyond the ship. “Ah, missed!” breathed Michael J. and raised his hand. The gunner released the firing pin and the six-inch projectile with which the gun had been loaded for two days crashed into the submarine at her water line.
A terrific explosion followed the shot. Cappy Ricks, gazing popeyed with horror, saw the submarine disintegrate and disappear in a huge water-spout; when the water settled only a vast and widening smear of heavy fuel oil showed where she had been.
From the forecastle head Michael Murphy yelled to Cappy Ricks. “Well, are you satisfied, sir?” On his part, Cappy, jubilant, even in the instant when he knew thirty new faces were already whining round the devil, dashed out on the bridge, seized the whistle cord and swung on it. A sad, nautical sob from theCosta Rica'ssiren answered him, and ten seconds later Terence Reardon whistled up the bridge. Cappy let go the whistle cord and took up the speaking tube. “Hello,” he piped.
“What the divil do ye mean be blowin' that whistle?” roared Terence, thinking he was addressing the mate. “Wit' me alone in the engine room how d'ye expect me to keep shteam up on this ould hooker wit' you blowin' it off in the whistle! Take shame to yourself!”
“Mike sunk the submarine! Mike sunk the submarine!” Cappy shrilled over and over again. “Come up, Terence, and see the oil. See the oil, Terence, see the oil! Mike sunk the submarine, Mike sunk it. Bully for Mike! Oh, bully! Bully! Bully! Mike sunk it, but I schemed it. Come up, Terence, I'm going to faint.”
And then, with shrill yips of delirious delight he slid down the companion to the main deck, to be gathered in Michael J. Murphy's arms and hugged and passed to the gun crew, who hoisted him to their shoulders and paraded joyously and blasphemously round the deck.
“I told you he wouldn't use a torpedo if he could do the trick with shells,” Gappy shouted. “I told you he'd board us if we didn't wireless for help. Ha, ha, ha! Te-hee!” And he burst into shrill cachinnations. “I out-thought the scoundrel—goin' to get a patent on my idea—turn it over to the Government—oh, Mike! Oh, Terence! Get the steward back aboard. We must have some liquor. They used to serve grog in the old navy after a victory, didn't they? Yi-yi-yi!”
Terence P. Reardon came up and proffered his greasy paw, the while his quizzical glance swept the oily sea. “Well, sor,” he remarked philosophically, “what wit' bein' a Christian I'm a little bit sorry the Dutchman lost, but back av that again I'm a little bit glad we won. Michael, do you get those blackguards o' mine down below as quick as ye can, or we'll be all day gettin' shteam up agin in this ould brute av a ship.”
Two days passed uneventfully; then shortly before sunset on the third day the look-out reported a periscope about a thousand yards distant and three points off the port bow. Cappy Ricks' old knees promptly commenced to knock together with excitement.
“Here's where Terence gets that torpedo if he doesn't come up out of the engine room,” Mike Murphy remarked laconically, and promptly whistled Terence on the engine room speaking tube. “Come up or be blown up,” he yelled.
“Divil a fear! We're comin',” Terence replied.
The chief and his crew had just reached the deck when the black shining turtleback of the submarine broke water.
“They have to come to the surface to discharge a torpedo,” Murphy explained to Cappy Ricks.
“Great Godfrey! Here it comes!” shrilled Cappy, and watched, fascinated, the wake of the torpedo as it raced toward them. Just as Terence Reardon and his engine crew came panting up on the bridge, the oldCosta Ricawalked into it. “Me ingine room! I knew it!” cried Terence. Then the explosion came.
From where he lay on his back, half stunned, Cappy Ricks saw water and wreckage fly high in the air. TheCosta Ricashivered. So did Cappy. Then the debris descended, and Cappy, choked with salt water, dimly realized that Terence Reardon had him in his arms and was carrying him down to the boat deck, where the motor lifeboat swung wide in the davits.
“Here, take the boss from me,” Terence commanded, and passed Cappy to a negro fireman, who carried the old man forward and laid him on a pile of blankets, previously placed there for just such an emergency.
Then the lifeboat commenced to drop away from the towering black topside and Cappy was aware of Michael J. Murphy's face—white, anxious, terrified—gazing down at him from the ship's rail.
“I'm just suffering from the shock,” Cappy called. “Mike, you 'tend to business. Remember what I told you and tell the crew to keep their mouths shut. He'll do the natural thing and walk into your hand.”
Murphy, reassured, waved his hand, and with his gun crew fled aft to the little house that protected the auxiliary steering gear from the weather, where they concealed themselves. In the meantime the other lifeboats had been lowered away; the painter from the third boat was passed to the second, which in turn passed its painter to the motor boat, and the ship's company hauled clear of the shattered, sinking ship. TheCosta Ricawas going down by the head, and Cappy, curious as any human being, sat up to watch his decoy disappear.
The submarine steamed up to them. “What vessel is that?” her commander shouted from the conning tower in excellent English.
“The American steamerSoak-it-to-'em, of Rotten Row,” Cappy Ricks replied, “carrying a cargo of post holes. She has three decks and no bottom.”
“How do you spell the name?” the German bawled.
“Can't hear you,” Cappy fibbed. Then,sotto voce, to Mr. Reardon: “Kick her ahead, Terry.”
“How do you spell the name?” the submarine captain repeated.
Cappy jibbered something unintelligible, and Mr. Reardon added to the puzzle by bellowing the information that thepwas silent, as in pneumonia. All this time the motor boat was putting distance between itself and the submarine, and the disgusted German, as a last resort, steamed away and circled round the rapidly lifting stern of the doomedCosta Rica, confident that there he would find the record of her identity and home port—information which, in his methodical German way, he desired to include in his official report to the Admiralty. And while he ratched slowly past, striving to find with his binoculars that which was not, Michael J. Murphy and his bully boys came aft with a rush, tore aside the tarpaulin that screened the stern gun and expeditiously opened fire. To Cappy Ricks' horror Murphy's first shot was a clean miss, and instantly the big sub started to submerge with a hoarse sucking sound that brought despair to Cappy Ricks' heart. She was halfway under before Murphy's gun was reloaded, but quite calmly the gun was traversed and deflected until the black stern flashed across the intersection of the wires in the sight; then Murphy's hand dropped and the gun roared.
“That'll do nicely, lads,” he told his crew. “Tore the stern off her that time; and from this dive she'll not come up. Cappy Ricks was right. He banked on human nature, and if curiosity isn't a human trait then I'm a Chinaman. Overboard with you, and away before the old girl goes under or we'll be sucked down in the vortex.”
And overboard they went, to be picked up five minutes later by Terence and Cappy in the motor lifeboat. “You were right, Mr. Ricks,” cried Murphy as he scrambled into the boat. “Curiosity killed the cat!”
“Yes, and it's blamed near killed me,” Cappy declared feebly. “Some of that debris came down and hit me a slap on the dome—Jerusalem! There goes my decoy—peace to her bones!”
TheCosta Ricadove to the Port of Missing Ships. Michael J. Murphy, however, did not turn to see her disappear; he was gazing, instead, at a thin red trickle that came from under Cappy's cap band and was running down his wizened neck. “Mr. Ricks,” he said anxiously, “you're wounded.”
Cappy rubbed the sore spot, and when he withdrew his fingers they were bloody.
“By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet!” he gasped wonderingly. “You're right, Mike. I've been wounded in action with the enemies of my country! So help me, Mike. I've actually lived to shed my blood for the Stars and Stripes, like any other Ricks.”
He gazed wonderingly at Mike Murphy. “Now I can die happy,” he murmured. “I've done my bit.”
“Yes, begorra,” rumbled Terence P. Reardon, “an' if I have my way about it ye're honorably discharged from the service this minute, Misther Ricks. I'll gallivant no more wit' you in ye're ould breadbaskets av shteamers. 'Tis highly dangerous an' no business for a man of family.”
Mike Murphy grinned at his colleague. “For all that, Terence,” he declared, “you must admit that Mr. Ricks' scheme for destroying submarines is the only practical one yet devised.”
“Thrue for ye, Michael. But shtill, like all fine invintions, the idjea has its dhrawbacks. Now if we could only be sure av a continyous supply av ould ships for use as decoys—”
“I see a smudge of smoke,” cried Gappy Ricks.
Mike Murphy followed the old man's pointing finger. “There's only one kind of boat makes a smudge like that,” he declared; “and it's a destroyer. Safe and well out of a glorious adventure. Faith, we're the lucky devils; and by this and by that, I'll enlist aboard that destroyer, now that I'm here on the job.”
“Do—an' good luck to you!” murmured Terence.
“Amen,” said Cappy Ricks, and fingered his trifling but honorable wound. “Gosh!” he murmured. “If Skinner could only know a thrill like this!”