CHAPTER ELEVENSECRET MEETING
Three weeks later Sally was again on those fine waters. Again it was night. Once more the city painted its many colored pictures against the sky. But how strangely different was the craft on which she rode!
Gone was the small rubber raft, the tuna, and the shark. Gone too was strange, intriguing Silent Storm.
“It will be a long time before I see him again,” she told herself, “but I may talk to him, perhaps many times.”
This was true. During the weeks that had just passed she had secured permission from her aged benefactor, the radio inventor, C. K., to show the secret radio to Silent Storm.
She had taken it to his house for the first time on the night of the tuna feast. That feast had been a great success. Nancy had gone with her. Never had she seen Silent Storm so carefree and gay as on that night.
When the feast was over, the three of them, Sally, Nancy, and Silent Storm, had retired to his den. There the secret radio was set up. Since he had a private hook-up with the station’s great aerial, things had gone very well.
For a time, it is true, no sound came over that secret wave length, but this had happened many times before. When at last the “put-put-put” began, the strange broadcasters had put on a real show. As on one other occasion the six separate units broadcasting were some distance apart.
Then came the sudden, loud and insistent bark of a broadcast for all the world like the call of a wolf leader to his pack.
“A call to the kill,” Sally had thought to herself. She was thrilled to the very center of her being, but said never a word. She wanted Silent Storm to listen and form his own opinions.
Slowly, surely, quite like the wolves of the Great White North, the broadcasters drew closer and closer together.
“Closing in on the prey.” Scarcely could she avoid speaking aloud.
Then came the loud, irregular barks of apparent command.
Strangely enough, when all this excitement was over and the broadcasters began to separate there were only five. One had gone silent.
“That,” said Silent Storm, mopping his brow, “is one of the strangest things I ever heard.”
“Is it an enemy sub wolf-pack?” Sally asked.
“It would be only one other thing,” Storm spoke slowly. “It could be a flight of our bombers concentrating on a target and then delivering their cargoes of death and destruction.”
“Yes,” Sally agreed, “the broadcasts fit that picture quite as well.”
“We can only wait and see,” said Storm. “We must do all we can to get Nancy and you on a ship at the earliest possible moment.”
Nancy seemed a bit startled by this, but Sally said: “That will be swell!”
“It Could Be a Flight of Our Bombers.”
“It Could Be a Flight of Our Bombers.”
“It Could Be a Flight of Our Bombers.”
“You see,” said Storm, “when you are on a ship you are constantly changing your position. Once you are at the center of the Atlantic, if these secret broadcasters put on a show like this for you, and if it is north, south, or west of you, you’ll know at once that they are subs and not bombers.
“And then!” he struck the table a blow, “then we’ll go after them. Last year we lost twelve million tons of shipping to those wolf-packs. Think of it! A million tons a month. That might mean the losing of the war.
“But with this secret radio of yours, if things are as we suppose them to be, what we won’t do to those inhuman beasts who have machine-gunned men struggling in the water and women on rafts!”
After that night, Sally had waited, impatiently, for the return of Danny’s ship. Then one day she met Danny on the street.
“Yes,” he whispered. “We are safely back. She’s a grand, old ship. I got a sub.”
“Danny! Good for you!” She wanted to hug him right there on the street.
“We’re sailing tomorrow night with a fresh convoy,” he confided, “and I’ve been told you are to sail with us.”
“And now, here I am,” Sally thought as she watched the city’s lights fade while they sailed out into the dark, mysterious night.
She was standing on a great, flat, top deck. Nancy was at her side, a dim shadow. Larger shadows, that were airplanes, loomed at their backs. No lights were showing. The radio was silent. They were alone on the sea. And yet there was to be a convoy.
“That will come later,” Lieutenant Riggs, radio officer for their flat-top, told her. “The ships of our convoy come from many places, Boston, New York, Portland, even San Francisco. Someone stuck a pin in a map. The spot is right out there in the sea.”
“Our secret meeting place.” Sally wet her lips. It was all so strange.
“It’s all of that,” was the quiet response. “And it better be mighty secret at that. Forty ships, all loaded, food, airplanes, soldiers. There are even a hundred WACS going over in one of those ships.”
“A hundred WACS,” Sally thought as she caught the last spark of light from the shore. There were twelve WAVES on this airplane carrier, and they weren’t just going over, but over and back. There were six women nurses as well. This was to be a trial trip.
“I hope we make good,” she had said to Lieutenant Riggs.
“Oh, you will. I can see it in your eyes.”
“Will we make good?” she asked Nancy.
“We’ll do our best,” was the solemn reply. “But what about the secret radio?”
“We can always listen for the subs. They can’t detect our listening. Perhaps that’s the most important of all.”
“Silent Storm has the other set?”
“Yes. He’ll be standing by for a half hour in the morning and again at night. In an emergency, the secret radio might help. Other than that, silence is the order of the day.”
“Yes, subs have ears,” Nancy agreed. “Loose talk may sink a ship.”
“It’s nice to have Danny on the ship.”
“Which do you like best, Danny or Storm?” Nancy asked.
“I like them both, but in different ways. Storm is like a big brother. He helps a lot. Danny’s just a very nice boy.”
“And really nice boys are about the nicest creatures in the world.” Nancy laughed low.
“I’m going below for a few winks of sleep.” Sally turned away. “There’ll be work to do later.”
“I couldn’t sleep now. It’s all too strange,” Nancy murmured, her eyes on the sea.
And indeed for this American girl it was strange. All her life she had been looked after, cared for. The things she wanted she got. She had joined the WAVES to do her bit but with the thought that she would remain in America. Now, caught up and carried on by Sally’s enthusiasm, she had gone to sea. She had been told that theirs was to be a slow convoy, that they would be twelve days at sea.
“Twelve days,” she whispered, looking away at the dark waters of night. “Twelve nights.” Losses from sinking were greater in these days than ever before. She could swim, but shuddered at the thought of being thrown into those cold, black, miserable waters. How was it all to end?
“Whatever happens, I’m in it to the end,” she had written her mother just before she sailed.
“And that’s that,” she told herself stoutly as she turned to make her way down the ladder to the forward cabins on the deck below where the nurses and the WAVES had their quarters.
Four hours later Sally found herself standing on the ship’s tower. Beside her stood Lieutenant Riggs. Riggs was a veteran ship’s radio engineer. No one seemed to know how old he was. He was tall, erect, every inch a sailor. His steel gray hair told that he was not young. His sharp, darting eyes had told Sally that here was a man who would demand exactness of service and never-failing loyalty. And she loved him for that.
She was feeling a bit nervous, for this was to be her first testing at sea. They had arrived at the place of meeting, an unmarked spot in an endless sea, ahead of the other members of the convoy.
Just a moment, before, she had caught a winking blink on the horizon.
“There’s one, south southwest,” she had said to Riggs.
“You have good eyes,” he commended. “Give them this message. See if they get it.”
As he read off the location the other ship was to take in relation to the airplane carrier, she blinked it out in code with the aid of an electric blinker, aimed like a gun at the other ship.
They waited. Then came the answering blinks.
“They got it,” she said simply. “They will go at once to their position.”
“Very good,” was his quiet reply.
For a full hour after that they stood there, he giving orders in a low monotone and she blinking them across the waters to some newly-arrived ship. As the work went forward, her heart swelled with pride. She was part of something really big. Great ships moved in on the dark horizon, ships loaded with oil, airplanes, food, soldiers, everything that is vital to war. Like an usher in some great theater of the sea, she told each ship where its place was to be and it silently glided into position.
“This,” she murmured, “is the life!”
“You are doing very well,” was Riggs’s comment. “Not a mistake yet.”
There were no mistakes. When the last ship had taken its position, there came low orders passed from man to man. Then they began moving on into the night.
Still Sally and Lieutenant Riggs held their places. One ship had forgotten or failed to receive the hour of departure. A question blinked to them was speedily answered. Then they too began to move.
A half hour later a tanker lagging behind was ordered to put on more steam.
And so it went until four hours were gone. Then Nancy appeared with a young lieutenant and Sally crept away to her quarters for more sleep.
“How do you like it?” a gray-haired nurse with a kindly face asked.
“Fine, so far,” was her answer. “Just swell. And so different!”
“Yes, it’s different all right. You might like to know,” the nurse’s voice dropped to a whisper, “I’m Danny Duke’s mother.”
“Danny’s mother!”
“He told me about you and Nancy. He likes you.” The gray-haired woman gave her a fine smile.
“And we like him. He caught me once, saved me from a broken leg or something,” was Sally’s reply.
“Yes, he told me about that.” She laughed. “Danny’s just a boy, you know. He’s my only child. You won’t tell that I’m his mother?” she begged. “It’s a bit irregular, my being on a ship with him. But I wanted it, so I told them if sons could sail the sea then mothers could, too. So they took me on, just for this trip. It’s sort of a tryout for all of us, you know.”
“Yes, I know. I won’t tell a soul. Thanks so much for telling me.” Sally moved on.
CHAPTER TWELVETHEY FLY AT DAWN
Sally awoke with a start. She had had a strange dream. In the dream three of her best friends had stood by her berth looking down at her. The older of the three said:
“She won’t wake up in time.”
“Not in time,” the next in line agreed.
“Oh, yes, she will!” the third exclaimed confidently.
“Well, I’m awake,” Sally thought. “Now I have all the bother of going back to sleep again.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them wide again. Through her eyelids she had received an impression of red light.
And, yes, there it was. The cabin was dark but the faint red light was there all the same.
“My secret radio!” she thought. “I can’t have left it on!”
She propped herself on an elbow to peer into the darkness. She had left the radio close to her berth, just in case—
There was no harm in that, for only Nancy slept in the berth above.
“It’s on,” she thought. “I’m sure I turned it off.”
This was strange for Nancy had been fast asleep when she turned in. Sally had tried picking up some sound of the “put-put-put-a-put” of the mysterious broadcasters and failed. Then she had—
At that her thoughts broke off short for, very faintly, because the radio was turned low, there came the familiar “put-put-put-put-a-put.”
“I turned the radio on in my sleep,” she told herself. There seemed to be no other possible conclusion, yet it seemed close to a miracle that she had done so for, during the two preceding days, she had caught not the faintest suggestion of a broadcast on her secret radio, and now, here, in the middle of the night, it was coming in strong. Needless to say, she listened with both her ears.
For two whole days she and Nancy, together with Riggs and the second radioman, had kept their convoy together, with blinker lights by night and flags by day. Not a sound had come from a radio on any ship of the convoy. It had been one of the strangest experiences of Sally’s entire life. To go to sleep at night after a look at dark bulks looming here and there on the horizon, and to wake up with those same ships in the identical position in regard to one another, yet some hundreds of miles on their way, had seemed unbelievable.
But now, here was the secret radio talking again. “This may be the hour,” she whispered excitedly as, having turned the dial, she listened once again.
Slipping from her berth, she drew on a heavy velvet dressing gown, turned the radio up a little, then sat there listening, turning a dial now and then, listening some more and all the time growing more excited.
After twenty minutes of listening her face took on a look of sheer horror.
“I can’t do it,” she thought. “I may be court-martialed. But I must! I must!”
For a full five minutes she sat there deep in perplexing thought. Having at last reached a decision, she went into action. After dressing hurriedly, she shut off the radio and disconnected its wires. Then, seizing it by the handle, she slipped out of the stateroom, glided along one passageway after another to wind up at last in the radio room where Lieutenant Riggs was standing watch alone.
“Why! Hello, Sally!” Riggs exclaimed. “What’s up?” He glanced down at the black box. “You’re not planning to leave the ship, I hope?” During the days of fine sailing they had enjoyed together, since the start of the convoy voyage, she and Riggs had become quite good friends.
She did not join in his laugh. Instead she said:
“Lieutenant Riggs, something terrible is happening. We are being surrounded by an enemy wolf-pack of subs.”
“Sally!” he exclaimed. “You’ve been having a bad dream. You’d better go back to bed.”
“It’s no dream.” Her face was white. “It’s a terrible reality.”
“But, Sally, how could you know that? The moon is down. The sky is black. It’s three in the morning. You haven’t a radio and even I have heard nothing within a thousand miles—not that I can hear those wolves,” he added. “No, nor you either.”
“Yes,” she replied in a hoarse whisper, “I do have a radio, and I can hear the sub wolf-pack, have been hearing them for half an hour.”
“What!” He stared at her as if he thought her mad. Then his eyes fell on her black box. “What’s that thing?” he asked in a not unkindly voice.
“It’s a secret radio.” She was ready to cry by now. “Sending and receiving. There’s only one other like it in the world. Perhaps they’ll court-martial me for it. I know how strict the regulations are about radios.
“But that does not matter now!” She squared her shoulders. “All that matters now is that you connect up this radio, that you listen to it and believe what I tell you.”
“I’ll try.” He did not smile.
In no time at all the radio was hooked up and “put-putting” louder than ever.
“That’s a sub giving orders to another sub,” she said quietly.
“Ah!” he breathed.
“Now watch. I turn this dial. That changes the direction of our listening. And—” For a space of seconds there came no sound and then again, “put-put-put....”
“That’s a different sub, answering the first.” There was quiet confidence in her voice. “It has a different sound.”
“So it does,” he agreed.
In the next ten minutes, she located six different radios operating out there, somewhere in the night.
“There are two others” she said as she straightened up. “Eight in all.”
“Eight,” he repeated after her.
“They’re on every side of us,” she said quietly. “The direction from which the sound comes tells that.”
“On every side of us.” Riggs seemed in a daze.
“But you can’t know unless you’ve listened to them as I have.” She gripped his arm in her excitement. “They’re closing in on our convoy from all sides. Closing in for the kill.”
“Closing in for the kill.” The Lieutenant spoke like one in a trance. “Thousands of lives, soldiers, nurses, WACs, airplanes, ammunition, food—closing in for the kill.
“Watch the radio!” he ordered. “I’ll be back with the Captain!”
“The Captain! Oh! Oh! No!” she cried. But he was gone.
To say that Sally was frightened would not have expressed it at all. For some time after Riggs left, she sat there shivering with fear.
Riggs had gone for the Captain. Did that mean that he believed what she had told him, or had he been shocked by the realization that she had laid herself open to court-martial?
“He’s gone for the Captain,” she told herself at last. “He’d never think of doing that, just to get me into deeper trouble. He’s not that kind of a man.” At that she drew in three deep breaths and felt better.
“He’s gone for the Captain,” she thought and shuddered. She had seen the Captain on the bridge, that was all. He had seemed a fine figure of a man, the sort you saw on the bridge in movies, stern, unsmiling, inflexible. She shuddered again.
But here was Riggs and with him the Captain.
“Miss Scott,” said Riggs, “will you kindly repeat your performance with that, that radio, for the Captain’s benefit?”
Sally’s fingers trembled as she turned on the radio. Noting this, the Captain said:
“As you were.” His dark eyes twinkled as he added: “We’re not ’angin’ Danny Deever in the mornin’.”
“So the Captain has a sense of humor,” the girl thought and at once felt much better.
Not only did she repeat the demonstration she had put on for Riggs, but for a full half hour she turned dials bringing in first this broadcaster, then another, and, at the same time, demonstrating by circles and angles that they were moving in, closer, ever closer, to the convoy.
Not this alone, but in her eagerness to be understood and trusted, she told the whole story of the secret radio and the experiments that had been carried on from the beginning.
“Riggs, I’m Convinced!” the Captain Declared
“Riggs, I’m Convinced!” the Captain Declared
“Riggs, I’m Convinced!” the Captain Declared
“Riggs, I’m convinced!” the Captain declared at last. “They will strike at dawn. In a half hour our men will be ordered to battle stations. Twenty minutes before dawn ten planes will leave the ship to scour the sea. At the same time half our destroyers will take up the search.
“Miss Scott, I salute you.” He clicked his heels. Instantly Sally was on her feet with a true sailor’s salute.
“They believe me,” she thought as the pair left the radio cabin. “By rights I should want to shout or burst into tears.” She wanted to do neither, just felt cold and numb, that was all.
Then, as red blood flooded back to her cheeks and she thought of fighting planes and destroyers shooting away before dawn, practically at her command, she suddenly felt like Joan of Arc or Helen of Troy.
Then a terrible thought assailed her. What if it were all a mistake? Only time could answer that question, time and the dawn. “They fly at dawn,” she whispered.
Just then someone entered the cabin. It was Nancy.
“Sally,” she exclaimed. “Why are you here? This is not your watch. I woke up and missed you. What have you been doing?”
“Plenty,” said Sally. “Sit down and I’ll tell you.”
CHAPTER THIRTEENAMONG THE MISSING
Presently Riggs came hurrying back. Nancy and Sally remained in the radio room, dividing their time between listening for messages from the outside world, and watching with awe the ever-narrowing circle being drawn about the convoy by the enemy sub pack.
Riggs busied himself getting off messages from station to station on the ship. All men were ordered to their posts. Planes not in readiness were prepared for flight. Some were hoisted from the lower deck to flight deck.
“It’s like a calm before a terrible storm,” Nancy said to Sally. Soon enough they were to learn what an actual storm could mean to a convoy at sea. For the present, however, there was quite enough to occupy their minds.
Once, when Sally climbed the ladder to the flight deck for a breath of air, she chanced to bump into Danny Duke.
“Oh, Danny!” she exclaimed. “Must you go out?” He was garbed in flying togs. A parachute hung at his back.
“Sure!” He laughed. “What do you think I trained for? A game of volleyball?”
She didn’t think. She just didn’t want anyone she liked as well as Danny to be out there fighting subs, dodging antiaircraft fire and watching the black sea that waited to swallow him up.
At last, as dawn approached and a young officer came to take her place, Sally closed up her black box, removed the wires and marched away to store it under her berth.
“Stay there a while,” she whispered, “until we know whether you mean honor or disaster for me.”
It was with a sober face that she returned to the flight deck. She found the planes that were to go all in place, their motors turning over slowly.
She caught a quick breath as the first plane took off; then the second and third had whirled away when a hand waved to her as a voice shouted:
“Hi, Sally! See you later!”
It was Danny. In ten seconds he was not there.
“Gone! Just like that.” She swallowed hard to keep back the tears.
“Yes, just like that,” came in a quiet voice. Sally turned to find Danny’s mother standing beside her.
“Tha—that was Danny,” Sally murmured hoarsely.
“Yes, that was my boy, Danny.”
“Did—did you want him to go?” Sally asked.
“Of course, my child. He’s well prepared, Danny is. It’s the work he was trained to do. Our country is at war. We must all do our part.” The mother’s eyes were bright, but no tears gleamed there.
“It’s so much easier to dream of war than it is to see it, feel it, and be a part of it,” Sally murmured.
“Yes, dreams are often more pleasing than the realities of life,” Danny’s mother agreed.
Sally stood where she was. There was comfort to be had from communing with this big, motherly woman, comfort and peace. And just then she was greatly in need of peace, for she was being weighed in the balance. The next few moments would decide everything. And so she stood there waiting for the answer.
And then the answer came, a deep-toned muffled roar, that seemed to shake the sea.
“They’ve found them,” Mrs. Duke said. “That’s a bomb.”
“They were there. They’ve found them!” Sally wanted to shout for joy. She said never a word, just stood there thinking: “Good old C. K. will be famous because of his secret radio. I won’t be court-martialed and thrown out of service for bringing it on board. Perhaps it has saved the convoy from attack, may save it again and again. Glory! Glory!”
Just then there came another roar. This was followed by a series of pom-pom-poms.
“That’s antiaircraft fire,” said Danny’s mother.
“Does it come from our destroyers?” Sally asked.
“No. We are the ones who have airplanes, not they. Besides, our guns on the destroyers don’t sound like that. You’ll hear them. There! There’s one now!”
There had come a boom that seemed to roll away to sea. There was another and another.
All this time, for all the world as if they were anchored in some harbor, the forty ships laden with freight and human cargo kept their places and moved majestically forward.
“It’s beautiful,” Danny’s mother murmured.
“And terrible!” Sally added with a sigh.
Soon from all sides there came the roar of bombs, the pom-pom-pom of antiaircraft fire, and all the time Sally was thinking: “Danny! Oh, Danny!”
And what of Danny? Having been told the course he should take, he had gone gliding straight away toward his supposed objective. Nor did he miss it. Feeling safe in their false security, the eight enemy submarines on the surface had come gliding silently toward the apparently defenseless convoy.
At the sound of Danny’s roaring motor, the sub he had been sent to destroy crashdived, but too late. Swooping low, Danny released a bomb with unerring accuracy. It missed them by feet, but when it exploded it brought the sub to the surface with a rush and roar of foam.
By the time Danny could swing back, three of the enemy had manned an antiaircraft gun, but, nothing daunted, Danny again swung low and this time he did not miss. His bomb fell squarely on the ill-fated craft and it exploded with a terrific roar.
But before this could happen, the antiaircraft gun had put a shell squarely through the body of Danny’s plane, ripping the radio away, damaging the plane’s controls, and missing sending Danny to oblivion by only a foot or two.
“That,” said Danny, as if talking of someone other than himself, “was your closest miss. Another time, they’d get you. But that other time won’t be—ever. So how about getting back to the ship?” Yes, how? His motor was missing, and his controls stuck at every turn.
In the meantime three planes came zooming back. Anxiously Sally waited as the landing crews made them fast. Danny’s plane was not among them.
One plane, a two-seated dive-bomber, had been shot up. Its pilot was wounded. Mrs. Duke went away to care for him.
The other two planes remained on board just long enough to take on more bombs. Then they were off again.
Catching Sally’s eye, the Captain motioned her to join him at the bridge.
“It’s marvelous!” he told her. “That secret radio of yours has saved ships and lives. Eight subs all ready to pounce on us and now look—” He swung his arm in a broad circle taking in all the gliding ships.
This was high praise. Sally’s bosom swelled with pride. Then—
“Danny?” she said without thinking.
“What about Danny?” He laughed. “Hell be back with the rest. A fine boy. Danny. There are few better. We need a lot of Dannys in this war.”
“Yes—yes, a lot of Dannys, but there’s only one,” she replied absent-mindedly.
She left the bridge to wander back to the deck. One more badly crippled plane made a try for the deck, but missed and fell into the sea.
A line was thrown to the pilot and he was pulled on board.
“Have you seen Danny?” she asked as the man came up dripping wet.
“Dan-Danny?” he sputtered, coughing up salt water. “Why yes, once. He was after a sub. Got him, I guess. But there were the AA guns, you know.”
Yes, Sally knew. She had heard them. Her heart ached at the thought of them.
Other planes came in. Had they seen Danny?
“No Danny.”
Were they going out again?
Orders were not to go. All subs had been accounted for. Looked as if a fog would blow in any time. It had been a grand day.
At last all planes were in but one, and that was Danny’s.
Then came the fog. Drifting in from the north, where fogs are born, it hid every ship of the convoy from Sally’s view.
Turning, she walked bravely along the deck, climbed down the ladder, entered her room, threw herself on her berth, and sobbed her heart out to an empty world.
Finally, she sat up resolutely, and her eyes fell on the secret radio. Here was an idea, perhaps a way out. Danny was out there on the sea. He must be. His plane carried a rubber raft. She would not give up hope. They were not yet too far from shore for heavy searching planes to reach the spot. She would get their location. Then she would radio to Silent Storm. He’d send out a plane, a dozen big planes from the shore. They could not fail to find Danny.
Yes, she would get Storm tonight on the secret radio. But dared she do it? Her splendid body went limp at the thought. This was a terrible world.
CHAPTER FOURTEENTHE CAPTAIN’S DINNER
That evening at the hour when Silent Storm had promised to be waiting at his Florida airport to receive any urgent message Sally might send, Sally sat alone in her cabin. Her fingers were on the dial, headphones over her ears, speaker under her chin.
“I will,” she whispered. “I must. It’s for the best pal I ever had, for Danny.”
And yet, she hesitated. It was very still in the cabin. There was only the faint sound of water rushing along the ship’s side. The thin fog continued. The convoy moved majestically on. Everyone said they had won a marvelous victory. Five, perhaps six submarines had been destroyed. No one could tell for sure about the other two. That her secret radio had played a major role in this victory she knew quite well. With her help, this radio with its gleaming red eyes had put out long fingers and touched the subs here, there, and everywhere. Then those brave boys in their planes had gone out and destroyed them.
“Danny got one. And then—” She did not finish.
She could not.
She started as there came a knock at her door. After hastily throwing a blanket over the radio, she said:
“Come in.”
The door opened. “Oh! Mrs. Duke!” she exclaimed. “I’m glad you came.”
“I thought you might need me,” The words were spoken in a surprisingly calm voice.
“Yes, I-”
Sally lifted the blanket from the radio.
“That’s good! It’s a fine and noble gesture.” Danny’s mother took a chair.
“It—it’s not just a gesture!” the girl exclaimed. “It’s the realest thing I ever thought of doing in all my life!”
“Yes, but you must not do it. You must not send the message.”
“It’s for Danny, your son, my friend and pal!”
“Yes, Danny is my son.” The gray-haired woman spoke slowly. “My only son—he—he’s been my life. But you must not send that message. It would almost surely mean court-martial for yourself.”
“Yes—I know. I don’t care.” Sally’s hand was on the dial.
“Thought You Might Need Me,” She Said
“Thought You Might Need Me,” She Said
“Thought You Might Need Me,” She Said
“Yes, I know. You would sacrifice your freedom and your honor for Danny. That is noble. I would do the same and much more.
“But there are others to consider.” The woman’s voice sounded tired. “So many others! There are more soldiers in this convoy than we know about, thousands of them! They too are fine young men, just as fine as our Danny. They too are prepared to sacrifice their lives for their country. It would be tragic if their lives were wasted.”
“But our boys destroyed those submarines!”
“Not all of them, not for sure, and there are other enemy wolf-packs. There were never as many as now. We know that they use the same wave-length as your radio does. They will hear your message and will hunt us down.”
“We will be listening, Nancy and I, night and day. Let them come! Our airplanes will destroy them!”
“Perhaps, perhaps not. The weather may not be right for flying. And then, try to think what it might be like.”
“But Danny?” The words came in a whisper that was like a prayer.
“Danny is alive. I feel sure of that. He’s on his rubber raft. The sea is calm.”
“But it may storm.”
“God will look after Danny. You believe in God’s care for his children, don’t you?”
“I—I don’t know. I’ve never been able to think that through.”
“Then you’ll have to trust Danny’s mother.” Mrs. Duke smiled a rare smile. “The time may come when Danny will mean more to you than he does to me. When that time comes, I shan’t mind. You are a splendid young lady. But until that time I shall have the right to say: ‘Sally, don’t send that message.’”
“All right.” Sally went limp all over. “You win.”
A moment later, after giving herself a shake, she stood up. “I’ll put the radio away. There’ll be no more subs for a time. Nancy and I have been invited by the Captain to have our evening meal with him at the officers’ table.”
“That’s splendid!” Mrs. Duke stood up. “You’ll enjoy it. You’re a real hero.”
“Will I? Am I?” Sally asked these questions of herself after Danny’s mother had gone. She did not know the answers.
Danny’s mother was right. For the moment at least, Danny was safe and quite comfortable. After battling his half-wrecked plane to a point where further struggle and loss of altitude might prove fatal, he gave up the fight and, circling down, went in for a crash landing.
His was as successful as any crash landing can be. Between the time he hit the water and his plane sank he was able to inflate his rubber raft, look into its equipment, and even salvage a heavy leather coat he carried for an emergency.
Scarcely had he accomplished this and paddled a short distance, when the plane put its nose into the water, stood there quivering, then disappeared from sight.
“Good old plane,” he murmured, as a strange feeling of loneliness swept over him. “You did your full duty. You sank a sub and probably saved a ship. Now, in Davy Jones’s Locker, you can rest in peace.
“Looks as if I’d get some rest, too,” he thought as, a short time later, he settled back against the soft, rounded side of his raft.
“A good, long rest,” he added as a cool damp mist, touched his cheek and the chill, gray fog came drifting in.
When he first hit the water the boom, bang and rat-tat-tat of battle were still in the air. After that had come comparative silence, disturbed only by the low roar of planes returning to their ship.
“A fine bunch of fellows,” he thought, as a lump rose in his throat. “Finest ever. Here’s hoping they all land safely.”
A faint hope remained that one of those planes would get away to search for him. When the fog came in he knew that hope was at an end.
He found the silence, broken only by the lap-lap of little waves, oppressive.
“Going to be lonesome,” he thought as he started to examine the gadgets that came with the rubber raft. There was a fish line and some artificial bait.
“I’ll try them all out,” he chuckled. “If I catch a whopper with one of the lures, I’ll send the manufacturer a picture of it with a story. He’ll like it for his catalogue.
“Only I won’t,” he murmured a moment later. “They forgot to pack a candid camera.”
Instead of a camera he found a device for distilling fresh water from salt, some iron rations, and a small bottle of vitamin B1.
“What? No vitamin D?” he roared. “But then, I’ve heard that there’s lots of the sunshine vitamin in the ocean air.”
At that he settled back for a rest. Even if worse came to worst he was better off than those wolf-pack pirates who had come after them.
It was with a feeling of misgiving that Sally allowed herself, along with Nancy, to be led to the door of the officers’ mess hall that evening. But when the Captain met them at the door with a bow and a smile instead of a stiff salute, things began looking better.
As they entered the mess hall they found all of the officers standing in their places. When the Captain had escorted them to their places at the head of his table he stood smartly erect, every inch a commander, as he said:
“Gentlemen, I propose a salute to the ladies of the day, Sally Scott and Nancy McBride of the WAVES.”
Instantly every man stood erect and snapped to a salute. It was a simple and impressive ceremony, one long to be remembered, but to Sally’s utter confusion, she almost forgot to return the salute.
It was all over in twenty seconds of time. Then they were all seated in their places ready for the meal that was to be quite a feast, in celebration of a real victory.
There was fried chicken with cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes, fresh, crisp celery, and baked squash. All this was topped with ice cream and very fine coffee.
Was Sally conscious of all this wealth of good things? Well, hardly. She was, first of all, tremendously interested in Captain Donald MacQueen who sat at her side. All her life she had dreamed of really knowing great and important people. Not that she wished to brag about it, far from that. She did long for an opportunity to study them, to feel their greatness, to try to absorb some of the qualities that had made them great. Now just such a man was giving the major portion of his time to her for one blissful half hour. A young lieutenant had taken over the task of entertaining Nancy, and he did not seem at all unhappy about it either.
Important to Sally also were the things Captain MacQueen was saying to her.
“This old friend of yours—his name is Kennedy, I believe—must be a great genius,” he suggested.
“Oh, he is!” she beamed.
“But it does seem strange that he should have entrusted such a priceless device to a, well, to any young person.”
“Perhaps it may seem that way to you,” was her slow reply, “but, Captain MacQueen, I think that too often those who boast of gray hairs underestimate the dependability, the devotion, yes, and the wisdom of the young people of today—and—and,” she checked herself, “I have worked with him for six years.”
“Everything you say is true.” His dark eyes twinkled. “But such a priceless invention! Look what it has accomplished today—given us a clean-cut victory, perhaps saved hundreds of lives and very precious cargo.
“Miss Scott,” he leaned close, speaking low, “this is one of the most important convoys ever to cross the Atlantic. Our enemy is not through. He will attack again and yet again, perhaps. But if we can always know, as we did today, the hour, the very moment of his attack—what a boon!”
“C. K. Kennedy is a very old man.” She was speaking slowly again, “He is an extremely modest man. In the case of another important invention he met with disappointment. I am sure he did not realize the real value of this secret radio.”
“But now he shall know. He shall be richly rewarded. Of course the government will want to take over his invention, but even so—”
“He does not ask for reward, only recognition.”
“He shall have both, and in good measure,” the Captain declared. “And now, let’s talk for a little while about the radio that is in your stateroom right now.”
“Ah,” Sally thought, with a sharp intake of breath, “now it is coming!”
“Of course, you realize, Miss Scott,” he said, speaking low but distinctly, “that for the present and probably for a long time to come, your radio has value to the Navy only as a listening ear.”
“No,” she replied quite frankly. “I’m not sure of that. It works quite well as a sending set.”
“In bringing such a radio on board you must have realized that you were laying yourself open to serious charges.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then, why did you do it?” His words were spoken in a tone that betrayed only a kindly interest.
“Because I believed the radio to be a great invention, one that could be made to serve my country, and because I wanted to bring honor to a real friend.”
“You did not really mean to try communicating with anyone on land?” he asked in a quiet tone.
“Only in case of a great emergency, and then only with an officer.” Her voice was low.
“I can think of no emergency that would warrant the sending of such a message. The truth is that such a message would be almost certain to bring in one more sub wolf-pack to hunt us down.
“That is not all.” He was still speaking in a low, friendly voice. “The moment our enemy realizes that we are able to listen in on his talk from sub to sub, that moment your radio loses its value. Think what it will mean if the escorting vessel in every convoy should be able in the future to listen as we did today while the wolf-pack moves in!”
“I-I have thought.” Sally wet her dry lips. “I shall not attempt to contact anyone with my radio, unless you sanction it—not—” she swallowed hard, “not for anything.”
“That is being a good sailor.” Putting out a hand he said: “It will be a pleasure to shake the hand of a lady who does honor to the Navy.” They shook hands solemnly.
When at last Sally and Nancy found themselves on the open deck once more, they were in prime condition for a long promenade.
“My head is in a whirl!” Nancy exclaimed. “How could all this happen to us?”
“We’re just what Danny would call fools for kick,” was Sally’s reply.
And then, at the very mention of Danny, she felt an all but irrepressible desire to sink down on the deck. Danny too should have had a part in all this. And where was he now?
“The Captain was wonderful,” she said to Nancy. “He must know how we feel about Danny.”
“Of course he does. He knows we all worked together on the radio.”
“And yet he never once mentioned Danny.”
“Didn’t he?”
“No, and I think that is about the most wonderful of all.”
For a time after that they marched on in silence. In a shadowy corner they passed two other WAVES seated on a pile of canvas. It was too dark to distinguish their faces.
After passing beyond a ladder, they paused to watch the moon, a faint yellow ball, rolling through the fog that was thinning and blowing away.
Then they heard one of the other WAVES talking. “Know who those girls are?” she was saying. “They are the ladies of the day. Imagine!” Her laugh was not good to hear. “One of them worked in a radio shop. The other was a radio ham. Now they’re the ladies of the day. And I gave up a five-thousand-a-year secretarial job to act as yeoman to Captain Mac Queen. Isn’t war just wonderful?”
“Who is that girl?” Sally whispered, as she and Nancy hurried on.
“She’s the Old Man’s yeoman all right (secretary to you),” Nancy replied. “I recognized her voice.”
“What’s she got against us?” Sally asked in a puzzled voice.
“That’s for her to know and for us to find out,” said Nancy. “But she’ll bear watching!”