CHAPTER VTHE STORM-CENTER MOVES EASTWARDThe loss of their island bases seriously hampered the enemy in their submarine warfare on the great stream of trans-Atlantic shipping. Submarines were now based on Lisbon and Gibraltar, and while they were still able to harass the merchant ships of the Allies, the sinkings were materially reduced, and the prospect of keeping Northern Europe supplied with the sinews of war became much brighter. Possession of these bases also enabled the Allies to conduct anti-submarine operations with destroyers and submarines in a way that had hitherto been impossible for want of any base near the focus of activity.The first time Evans dined with Mortimer after these islands had come into the possession of the Allies, this important development naturally led them to talk over the general problem from a new angle.“Broadly speaking,” said Evans, “it is in a way a problem of morale and numbers against resources and wits. We have far better morale and slightly superior numbers. They command the resources of all Southern Europe, Egypt, and the East, and they still have pretty free access to those of South America. In this respect, unless we can cut them off from South America, they have an appreciable advantage over us. As to wits, I don’t mean that the Nordic peoples as a whole are inferior to them, but theirs is the advantage of well-laid plans and a marvelous centralized control. They’ve been planning this thing for fifteen years, and they’ve done a devilish good job of it. We have wits, but ours are not yet coördinated.“Specifically, our problem is, first, to sink enough of their subs to ensure the flow of munitions from the Western Hemisphere to Northern Europe; that will enable us to maintain our present status; second, to engage and destroy their fleet, and thus break their control of the Mediterranean. That will be the hardest thing to do, for they don’t want to give us a crack at it; they won’t take a chance of battle unless they can feel sure of most favorable conditions; but if we can smash their fleet, the game is won.”Mortimer listened thoughtfully, nodding his head in acquiescence as his friend talked; but Evans interrupted himself by saying, “Well, here I am giving my elders and betters a twopenny talk on the cosmos.”“Don’t worry about that,” answered Mortimer; “it helps me to see the broader issues and clear my head of the mass of administrative detail. Go to it and give me some more.”“Well,” resumed Evans, “as to the submarine problem—we’re in a position to go after them now. Obviously one of the first things to do is to put the very best radio compasses we can on shore stations at Punta Delgada, Madeira, and the Canaries, fitting them with first-rate amplifiers so that we can pick up subs as soon as they come out of Lisbon or Gibraltar. Then we can follow their movements by taking cross-bearings on them every time they use their radio, just as the British did with the German subs in the old days.”“You know, I still have my doubts about this radio-compass business,” put in Mortimer. “Nothing has been done with it to restore the confidence of either Commander Rich or myself since the Sheridan affair. I still consider it on trial, and question the wisdom of spending much money installing such stuff on the islands.”“No one has bothered to tell you what has been done,” said Evans, “but the fact is that the radio compasses all along the coast are continuing to give accurate bearings to incoming ships whenever the weather is thick, just as they have for the past twenty years, and the skippers for the most part continue to trust them. Anyway, this is a different issue. It doesn’t involve depending on the bearings for navigation of our ships; it is a matter of information about the enemy, and we can’t afford not to use it. The Bureau of Operations is counting on the use of these shore stations, and recognizes also the importance of working up coördinated hunting groups of destroyers to pick up the scent of the sub by crossed radio-compass bearings, and then, having thus located her roughly, to run her down with hydrophones.“Now the shore stations have the longest range; they’ll spot a sub nearly a thousand miles away, but since their work is long-distance triangulation, they’ll place her only roughly. This will serve very well to tell the destroyers and chasers where to go to look for her, but by the time the information is transmitted and the hunting craft have got there, the sub may be too far away from the designated spot to find her with hydrophones. It is in this intermediate stage that the radio compasses on the destroyers themselves will come in. These have less range than the shore stations, but more than the hydrophones. Cruising in line, the destroyers may, by quick work, get cross-bearings on a sub sending signals anywhere within fifty miles, and thus locate her to within a mile. Then there’s a fair chance of picking her up with the hydrophones or magnetic detectors after she has submerged; and once that is done there’s a fair chance of covering her with a pattern of depth bombs, if the team-work is good.“Now that sounds all very pretty, here by the fireside. But the pirate will have sense enough to fear these tactics, and will cut his messages down perhaps to one or two letters at a time, which won’t give the boys much chance for accurate bearings, no matter how quick they are. Then, he too has hydrophones, and when he hears us coming, he’ll slow down till you can’t hear him unless you’re almost on top of him. Still, with all these difficulties, it’s worth while playing that game for all there is in it. It may get us a few subs, if we keep it up on a big enough scale; even if it doesn’t, it will bother the sub and cramp her style, and it will give our boys the finest kind of drill.“Now, there’s another matter which the difficulties of hunting with destroyers brings to my mind. In the war with Germany the chasers used to run their drifting patrols and hunts with all their listening gear, and once in a while, probably even less often than they thought, they picked up the sound of a sub. Then it was ‘up tubes’ and give chase; then ‘down tubes’ and listen again; a short burst of speed, then a dead stop, for they couldn’t listen under way. The chases had to be short, for Fritz could change course and speed, and then, while they were rushing to where they thought he was, they’d lose him. It was a sort of a hare and tortoise race, and you remember who won that. Our chasers to-day are somewhat faster and have much better hydrophones than those of 1918, but the problem is still much the same.“Now, there’s a group of young officers in the Bureau of Engineering that have studied the history of those chaser maneuvers of 1918, and have put their heads together and worked out what looks to me like a real solution of that difficulty. More than one of the chaser captains of that time have said that, if they could have continued to listen instead of having to attack, they would have kept track of the sub’s whereabouts much longer than they could in the intermittent pursuit. Taking their cue from this fact, these officers have worked out a scheme which enables the listeners to keep on listening, and then to delegate other vessels to go to the spot they designate and surround the sub as a seiner surrounds a school of mackerel—with a string of nets. Their plan is to develop a fleet of ships like those that laid the great North Sea mine barrage—ships that will be fast and will have machinery for laying a net at very high speed. A sub can cut through an ordinary net and escape, so they have worked out plans for a net that will give notice if she tries it. It is to be studded with small telltale bombs just big enough to raise a fountain, but not big enough to add much to the weight and size of the net. These bombs, each in a section a hundred yards long, will be exploded by an electrical device if the sub touches any part of that section. It won’t hurt the sub, but it will tell you where she is, and you’ll have boats on hand with depth charges to do the hurting. The point is to establish quickly a barrier around the sub through which she can’t pass without giving away her position.“These young officers have been fearfully keen on this thing and have worked out practical plans for machinery that will pay out the net at a speed of six knots, and the electrical gear for setting off the bombs.“You can’t anchor the net, for the ocean’s too deep out there; it must be suspended from buoys. It needn’t reach down more than about three hundred feet, for no sub could dive under it at that depth without being crushed by water pressure. The tactical scheme is to have these boats, eight or ten of them, lie in wait at a central point with groups of drifting listeners scattered all around them, say, twenty miles away. When a sub is heard and located, the listeners call the net-layers by radio, and they go to the spot at a thirty-knot speed. As they approach they soon drown out the sound of the sub, but their speed and number enables them to surround the area in which she is known to be, for she won’t have time to go far from where she was last heard. Paying out their nets, they hem her in and keep the ring of nets closed round her till the area is raked with trailing wires and other electromagnetic detectors which will enable the chasers to concentrate their depth charges with the certainty of a kill.”“That sounds like the most constructive—or rather artistically destructive—proposition I’ve heard yet,” said Mortimer with enthusiasm. “What are they doing about it? Have they submitted it to the Bureau Chief?”“They’ve tried to, but they couldn’t get much attention paid to it.”“Why not?”“I’ve tried to find out why, but I can’t quite make it out. On the face of it the trouble seems to be the usual conservatism and inertia about taking up anything new. Did you ever read the article Sims wrote on Military Conservatism?”“No,” said Mortimer.“Well, in that, he showed how every great advance, such as gunpowder and steam, met with opposition, and chiefly from the men at the top, who, being the older men, had quite naturally lost the mental flexibility of youth. It may be just another case of that. Admiral Bishop is a conservative old buck. But then I suspect this project has never come to his attention. I think it’s been stopped lower down, and I fear there may be jealousy or politics or something else worse than conservatism involved in this.”“Give me the names of the men who have developed the scheme,” said Mortimer, “and I’ll dig it out. I’ll make old Bishop find out about it and bring it up before the General Staff. I needn’t tell him how I heard of it; so nobody will get in trouble.”Mortimer lost no time in bringing this matter before Admiral Bishop. The old man was averse to bothering his head with any new, wild-cat schemes, but, yielding reluctantly before Mortimer’s insistence, did secure from the authors of this one an outline of it for consideration by the General Staff. At the meeting of this body a number of objections were raised by the more conservative officers. The expense would be out of all proportion to the prospect of success; nets could never be paid out fast enough to surround the elusive sub; the thing had never been done—was unheard of; these new-fangled schemes never did work, anyway. With his lawyer’s skill, Mortimer questioned them as to all the difficulties in the way of the project, till he felt that some of the more progressive members were in favor of it, and the others weakening. Then, following this advantage, he showed them how lacking in the convincing quality all the objections had been, and virtually demanded and finally obtained their acquiescence in putting the plan into operation, overriding the final objections of Admiral Bishop in a way that caused this officer to be visibly incensed.Engineering talent was set to work on the details of the scheme, perfecting the net studded with tiny bombs, and the machinery for paying it out at high speed from the moving ship. This latter being a purely mechanical problem, there was no lack of inventive skill available for bringing it to the production stage in record time. Provision was made for the safe recovering of the nets without detonating the bombs. Five fast liners, built and building, were taken over and rearranged for installation of additional boilers and the new gear. Three new ships were started building, specially designed for this service. Thus it was estimated that, during the autumn, eight ships capable of thirty knots would be ready to give this project a trial.Mortimer requested Admiral Bishop to institute an investigation to find out why this important suggestion had been side-tracked. This quest proved most confusing; the original copy of the communication could not be found. Several engineer officers recalled having seen it, and one said he thought he had turned it over to Commander Rich to get his opinion. Commander Rich, on the other hand, said he was sure he had never seen it. In the end it was concluded that the paper had been pigeon-holed and then lost through the carelessness of some yeoman.Mortimer told Evans the result of this investigation. Evans listened attentively, frowning as the unsatisfactory conclusion was reached. For some time he sat in silence; then he spoke:“Sam, it’s a beastly uncomfortable thing to come to you with a criticism of my superior officer, but I don’t see how I can conscientiously dodge it. For some time I’ve been getting uneasy about Commander Rich, and this thing makes me more so.”“What do you mean?” asked Mortimer.“I doubt his loyalty.”“That’s a pretty serious thing to say. What evidence have you?”“Not much, I admit,” said Evans. “But do you recall that business about the British vacuum-tube transmitter? There seemed to be a peculiar discrepancy between his point of view as represented by the Admiral, and that which he himself took in the final show-down.”“That was just a misunderstanding,” said Mortimer. “You’re too suspicious, Jim. Just get that out of your system.”“Maybe I am. Just the same, I’d keep my eye on him if I were you.”“That’s perfect rot,” said Mortimer. “Rich is one of the ablest and most dependable men in the service; the more I see of him the better I like him. You’d better quit suspecting him, and give him a little loyal support and coöperation yourself.”Evans said no more; there seemed nothing more to say. He had a nasty feeling inside, and a change of subject seemed indicated.Another project, made possible by the capture of the Azores, also engaged the attention of the Navy Department at this time. The completion of the new breakwater and harbor works at Punta Delgada had now made this an ideal base for destroyers, chasers, and other submarine-hunting craft; but even this harbor was not nearly big enough for the entire fleet of battleships and cruisers. If the fleet had to lie at anchor outside the harbor there must be some protection against attack by enemy submarines. Now, unless the place could be made safe for the entire fleet, its value as a base for anti-submarine operations was seriously impaired, for if a fleet of chasers set out from Punta Delgada to hunt in the direction of Gibraltar and no powerful ships were within call, a detachment of enemy cruisers could come out and destroy them. Destroyers supported by fast scout cruisers could sally forth in comparative safety, for their speed would enable them to retreat under the cover of the coast-defense guns if pursued by a superior force of the enemy. Submarines, too, could operate from the Azores in comparative safety, for they could hide at will. But the large flotillas of chasers now being commissioned and manned, good for only sixteen knots, would be exposed to grave danger if they operated far enough from their base to do any good.It was at this point that the services of Heringham in Constantinople became a source of safety and strength. The combined fleet of the Allies could lie at Brest, and if at any moment, day or night, a force of enemy ships weighed anchor at Gibraltar, and started out through the strait, word of it would at once reach the Admiral at Brest, and in less than two hours the Allied fleet could be under way in search of them. This arrangement made it possible for chasers and other patrol craft, too slow to escape from enemy cruisers, to operate in waters nearer to Brest than to Gibraltar, but outside this area their helplessness in the face of attack by cruisers rendered their search for submarines unwise.For this reason, as well as because of the strategic position of the place and the greater ease with which secrecy concerning the activities of the fleet could be maintained at such an isolated spot, it was most desirable to develop a base for the whole fleet at the Azores rather than in French or British waters. A plan was therefore developed to enclose the entire area between the islands of Saint Michael’s, Santa Maria, and Formigas, the most easterly group of the Azores, with a barrier of heavy nets reinforced with mines, and a system of detecting nets of wires which would at once reveal the approach of a submarine attempting to break through, and tell the observer at a central station on shore the very point at which the approach was made. Thus there would be a sheet of water roughly thirty miles by sixty, protected from attack by sea, with a fair anchorage for the entire fleet just south of Saint Michael’s. It was a large engineering project, but not too large for the end to be gained. This, it was estimated, would take till the late summer for completion.In the mean time, Punta Delgada became the storm-center of all the patrolling and submarine hunting by swarms of destroyers, submarines, and seaplanes. Weather stations were established here and in all the other captured islands, manned by officers trained for this duty by Professor Jeremy, now holding the rank of commander.As the spring wore on and the men on the patrolling craft learned how large the ocean was and how seldom any trace of a submarine could be found in its expanse, enthusiasm for the chase gave way to ennui and discouragement. A little success was sorely needed to put heart into both officers and men, worn as they were by the tedium of the long, dreary watches at sea.Late in May, Evans and Mortimer motored out into the country some miles from Washington, and went for a walk together.“I think I’m rather wasting time here in Washington,” said Evans. “I believe I’d find more to do now in the Azores.”“I don’t see how we can spare you here, Jim,” answered Mortimer. “Seems to me we need you in the Bureau to help all these engineering developments;—not to mention your glittering generalities which I find rather helpful now and then.”“I guess you can get along all right without any ‘glittering generalities’ from me. As for engineering developments, I find that I can’t get much of anywhere with Rich in charge of the Radio Division.”“Still at odds with your chief? Forget it; buck up, and play the game with the organization as you find it.”“I can’t help it,” said Evans. “There’s no use my trying to work here in the Bureau with him. He apparently stands for efficiency and progress; he agrees heartily to every constructive suggestion for improvement, yet somehow the necessary orders don’t get issued, or, if issued, don’t go into effect. I keep feeling that my hands are tied. But in spite of all this we’ve got enough material out to the Azores, so that if I could get there, I could shape it into what I want, unhampered by the obstruction that’s hindering me here. I know how it is from what I saw in 1918. There’s always less red-tape at the scene of actual warfare than there is in the Bureaus here. I’m sure that if I can get to Punta Delgada I shall be more nearly on my own, and can work to better advantage. There are lots of engineering possibilities there, and I can fix things up to my liking without this officious interference from above.“Besides, it’s at Punta Delgada that the communication storm-center will be from now on. I feel sure I can be more useful tinkering with the apparatus in the fleet, and seeing that the boys use it right, than I can imparting spare calories to a swivel chair here in Washington. In particular, there are the radio-compass shore stations that we are installing in the various islands; the regular work of installation is going on all right, but there’s always a possibility of their not working as they should, and it’s really a physicist’s job to take care of that sort of thing. Then the apparatus must be accurately calibrated, and the personnel taught to use it quickly, and the machinery for transmitting the intelligence rapidly to headquarters and thence to the ships that can use it, must be organized, and organized well. For all that sort of work, I think it’s time to be moving a good many of your men of engineering ability out to the Azores where things are going on.”“There’s no doubt,” said Mortimer, “that there’ll be plenty of engineering work to be done out there, and more and more as time goes on; and I can see the importance of having you as a physicist look over those radio compasses. But I should like to be able to keep in touch with you, and frequent messages from a warrant officer in the fleet to the Secretary would look kind of funny; you might get uncomfortably snubbed by some one.”“I think I can get round that,” said Evans. “I’ll work out a method of dropping you a hint or a glittering generality now and then without even ruffling the surface. I learned one or two tricks from those fellows in London about faking telepathy. We could arrange a flying trip home if the occasion arose.”“Well,” said Mortimer, “you’ve got away with lots of things a warrant officer’s got no business to, and they haven’t had to court-martial you yet. Go ahead and fix up your secret code and make your plans, and let me know when you’re ready to start.”A few days later they met again. Evans reported himself ready to leave for the destroyer flotilla.Mortimer said: “I wish you would look over the dramatis personæ in the fleet and size up who’s who as far as you can, especially when the main fleet gets out there, which will be some time in August. It’s hard for me to size them up from my desk in the department. If you are convinced that there’s anything radically wrong with the men at the top, give me one of your magic hints and I’ll send for you to come and tell me about it.”They conferred at length over many phases of the great problem, arriving at a close and harmonious understanding on the main points of the task confronting the navy. It was arranged that Evans should be temporarily attached to a new destroyer that was about to sail for Punta Delgada, and on arrival, be attached to the mother-ship of the destroyer flotilla, a vessel similar to the oldMelvillethat lay at Queenstown in 1918, equipped with repair shops and other facilities for the care of the destroyers. Here he was to be technical assistant to the radio material officer; and in a letter from the Bureau of Engineering it was explained that he was to visit the shore stations and see that everything was installed according to the latest engineering developments.“What about your method of communicating with me?” asked Mortimer.“There are two expert radio aides (civilians) in the Bureau of Engineering, who are highly intelligent and preeminently discreet,” answered Evans. “Their names are Tompkins and Rand. Keep those men on the job in the Bureau, and if I have anything to tell you they’ll pass it on to you.”“How will you manage that?”“I’ll fix it somehow. All you’ll have to do is to keep those two men there. If anything happens to either of them, notify the Intelligence Bureau at once, and tell them to lose no time and spare no pains probing the matter; then watch your step. If one dies, let the remaining one choose his successor and teach him the technique.”Four days later Evans reported on board a new destroyer setting out to join the flotilla at Punta Delgada. During the first part of the journey she assisted a cruiser serving as ocean escort for a great convoy of merchant ships loaded with munitions and food for the armies of Northern Europe; but when in mid-ocean, she was detached from the convoy, and, speeding up to twenty knots, laid her course for Punta Delgada.It was in the middle of a beautiful June afternoon as the destroyer was gliding over a glassy sea bathed in sunshine, when the lookout first sighted the cloud-capped mountains of Saint Michael’s. As they approached and coasted along the southern shore of the island, the clouds rolled away revealing the soft yet striking outline of the range clad in semi-tropical verdure. Presently, some miles ahead, they could discern the town of Punta Delgada shining in the afternoon sun; then across the breakwater the masts of many ships, destroyers, and auxiliary craft. The town took shape, scattered over the steep, sloping hillsides around the old harbor. Nearer they came, and at last slid smoothly through the opening in the net into the great new harbor. Before them spread a panorama that might well gladden the eyes of all on board after nine long days on the barren ocean. Gay-colored houses in pink, yellow, and white stucco, in brilliant relief of sun and shadow, breathing an Old-World atmosphere, lined the shore, while strange and picturesque trees and gardens dotted the slopes receding to the capricious outline of the green hills beyond. It seemed as if a magician’s wand had conjured out of the sea a city of a far-off age and of another world. And in the foreground, tied two by two at mooring buoys, the long, lean American destroyers spoke of the grim business of war.To Evans, drinking in the picture before him, it was hard to believe he was not in some strange dream. And being more impressionable than most men, his mood became that of a child witnessing for the first time a scene of fairyland artfully displayed on the theatrical stage.To make the incongruity of the whole scene complete, a large American seaplane, returning from patrol, came whirring down out of the sky and lit on the harbor in a great splash of white foam, then taxied to her mooring. Rowboats, manned by natives of the town and loaded with pineapples and other tempting commodities, swarmed around the destroyer as she tied up to her designated buoy.The sunlight on the hills and houses turned golden and then red, and finally disappeared. A pink sunset faded into twilight, and just before dark six destroyers cast off from their moorings, slipped out silently through the opening in the net and headed to sea on a hunting patrol.Early next morning Evans went aboard the mother-ship of the flotilla and presented his orders at the Flag Office. When they had received the endorsement of the Chief of Staff, he was instructed to report for duty to Lieutenant Larabee, the radio material officer, a man of twenty-eight, whose technical assistant he was to be.“Gunner Evans,” said Larabee. “Yes, we had a letter about you from the Bureau. I understand you have been assisting in some of the newer engineering developments there, and that you’ve had previous experience in a physics laboratory.”Evans assented.“There’s one thing you’ll have to learn on this job,” continued Larabee; “conditions afloat are very different from those in a laboratory on shore; a lot that goes there won’t go here.”Evans received the advice with thoughtful deference, and as they discussed the problems before them, he studied with the closest scrutiny the mentality of the young officer, nearly twelve years his junior in age, but three grades his senior in rank. Neither in this conversation nor for long afterward did Larabee discover that Evans had served many months as a radio operator on a destroyer in the war zone during the war with Germany twenty years before, nor did he dream that his age was such as to render this possible.In pursuance of the suggestion Evans had made to Mortimer, several men who had played important parts in the engineering developments at home were soon transferred to Punta Delgada—not without remonstrance on the part of those who had come to rely on their efficiency—and were now absorbed in the increasing organization at this point. In this way preparation was made to bring the engineering skill of the service into play at what would soon be the center of all operations. Among others a chief radio electrician of exceptional skill and understanding, a man Evans had picked before leaving Washington, to be his assistant, arrived and reported as he had done, for duty under the radio material officer.On board the mother-ship there was a small radio laboratory or test shop where experiments with new apparatus could be conducted. Evans saw its present limitations and future possibilities (provided more space was available), possibilities of work of the first importance in the perfection of the technique of communication in all its complex phases. Larabee, eager to make the radio material service of the flotilla as good as possible, welcomed the assistance of a handy and competent radio gunner, and began to put up a strenuous fight for the needed space. The ordnance officers wanted the space and objected, and the executive officer backed them up. But at last, spurred on by his increasing sense of the importance of what he sought, Larabee succeeded in showing the ordnance officers how they could manage without the coveted space, and in convincing the executive officer of his need of it. Then Evans had a free hand to equip the laboratory to his heart’s content. Cabled requests went out to Washington for new supplies and apparatus, but during the necessary weeks of waiting Evans was never at a loss for methods of utilizing such crude materials as he could pick up in the machine shop or on the scrap-heap.Nor was his time all spent in this laboratory: his duties took him aboard nearly every ship in the flotilla, where he scrutinized the condition of the apparatus, questioned the operators, stimulated their interest, and set them thinking as they had never thought before. Most of the destroyer skippers noticed an increase in efficiency in the handling of communications by the men under them, and some patted themselves lustily on the back for it. It was not long after his arrival that he had made the round of the radio-compass stations on shore, not only in the Azores, but also at Madeira and the Canaries. On these excursions he tested and calibrated each station with a destroyer circling at a distance of two or three miles, sending signals; and he spared no pains to satisfy himself that the operators had a thorough understanding of their duties, and knew full well that on their vigilance rested large issues.But after his first general survey of the flotilla as regards its efficiency in communications, Evans found time for further research which this survey had suggested to him; and he was never so happy as when thus engaged. Sometimes, as a result of an idea either in the realm of electrical theory or of tactical expediency, the need of intensive development of new or modified apparatus would appear; then an engineering research, which in peace-time would require months, was completed in five or six days. Evans in his dungarees would work day and night with his skilled assistants, often risking death among wires charged with a thousand volts or more. No time was spent writing detailed protocols of experiments. Results were carried in his head with only occasional notes scribbled on scraps of paper or on the walls of the test shop. The radio chief who assisted him became fired with his enthusiasm and worked ungrudgingly for long hours which would ordinarily make most petty officers grumble loud and long.In the warrant officers’ mess Evans was more often the listener than the speaker. When occasion offered, he would draw out the older men on the specialties in which they were expert, and often would guide the conversation into a discussion of coördination, in which each man was stumped to show how his particular duty fitted into the organization of the navy as a whole, and thereby was led to see his own function in a new light, thus acquiring an increased sense of his responsibility. There was one old boatswain named Jenks nearly sixty years of age, a veteran of both the Spanish and the German wars, a relic of the old type of seaman that is all too scarce. Evans delighted in leading him to open his rich storehouse of experience, and in drawing from him his old-time navy lore. Jenks in his turn found Evans sympathetic, and talked with him as he did with few other men, revealing a shrewdness and wisdom which had often stood him and the navy in good stead.To the mess as a whole Evans remained something of an enigma. They saw him in his room manipulating a slide-rule and jotting down figures on a scrap of paper, softly humming a tune to himself the while. Few of them had ever seen a slide-rule, and from his frequent use of it they inferred that he had had more schooling than most of them; but in general they found him rather uncommunicative as to his past history.For exercise and relaxation Evans frequently went ashore and took a walk among the hills. On his first shore liberty the sense of foreign picturesqueness came over him more than ever as he approached the antique landing in the center of the town, where at the water’s edge was an array of architecture so different from anything in the Anglo-Saxon world. On shore he found himself in a strange world indeed. Strange sights, sounds, and smells greeted him everywhere; barefooted men were leading donkeys laden with goods about the narrow, dirty streets. And after flooding his senses with a riot of impressions of an alien world, it was with a distinct sense of homecoming that he returned to his quarters aboard the mother-ship of the flotilla.He had not been at Punta Delgada long before he discovered a spot easy of access, walled off from the town, in which, among the most restful and soothing surroundings, he could give himself over to relaxation or thought. This was the ancient Borge garden, created by one of the Portuguese nobles who flourished on these islands in the far-off days of their feudal prosperity. Now neglected, overgrown with weeds, this antiquated paradise reflects its former glory with a stronger appeal than if it were kept up with a lavish hand, much as the ivy-covered ruins of England tell their story all the better for their ruined state.In the Borge garden there are trees of the strangest, most fantastic character—trees with pudgy leaves, trees with shapes one would never believe could really exist. Here and there are deep grottoes with giant tree-ferns growing from their depths; zigzag stony paths lead down into them or through tunnels or over bridges artfully contrived to conceal as far as possible their artificial nature. Fascinating glimpses into the depths of tropical greenery are thus given emphasis by their skillful setting. Surmounting the rest of the garden high up on the slope is an ancient watch-tower commanding a view of the sea. Crumbling steps overgrown with weeds lead up the side to its summit. Beside it stands a majestic and venerable tree, a conifer of the cedar or cypress group, which must have stood there for centuries casting its deep shade on the old watch-tower. Framed under its great lichen-covered branches, the wide expanse of the blue ocean makes the fairest of pictures—one on which the eye can rest and never tire.Evans made friends with the old barefoot gardener who opened the great gate in the garden wall, and by signs and gestures allayed his suspicions till the old man admitted him cheerfully whenever he knocked.Here, when his brain was taxed and overwrought, he would seek the quiet of the garden and give himself over to rest or meditation. Sometimes he would wander through the depths of the great fern grottoes, but oftener he would climb to the top of the watch-tower and sit gazing off over the blue expanse of sea, as perhaps the lookout had done in other wars of a bygone age. Many a problem in the borderland of science and strategy which harassed him in the turmoil of life aboard ship yielded a solution to his mind unfettered and free as it was when he sat on the watch-tower.The Borge garden was inhabited by numerous small birds that sang melodiously among the trees and shrubs, and so doing enhanced immeasurably the charm of the place. Evans was no ornithologist, but he was a lover of all wild life, and especially of birds. He took with him to the garden liberal stores of crumbs which he scattered on the ground about him. Little by little the more venturesome of his feathered friends grew accustomed to his presence, and would light on the ground beside him, till finally one or two actually came and ate from his hand. He would talk and whistle to them, and in course of time, whenever they heard his voice, they would fly to the old tree by the watch-tower and there await the social feast which he never failed to bring. He in turn found a deal of cheer in the companionship of his bird friends. And so it was that when disheartened or exasperated with inertia and officiousness, the snarls of red-tape in which supply clerks entangled much-needed gear, or the stupidity and indifference of radio operators whom he tried to instruct, he found in the little birds of the garden a solace that made life more livable, and more than once helped him over the hard places.
The loss of their island bases seriously hampered the enemy in their submarine warfare on the great stream of trans-Atlantic shipping. Submarines were now based on Lisbon and Gibraltar, and while they were still able to harass the merchant ships of the Allies, the sinkings were materially reduced, and the prospect of keeping Northern Europe supplied with the sinews of war became much brighter. Possession of these bases also enabled the Allies to conduct anti-submarine operations with destroyers and submarines in a way that had hitherto been impossible for want of any base near the focus of activity.
The first time Evans dined with Mortimer after these islands had come into the possession of the Allies, this important development naturally led them to talk over the general problem from a new angle.
“Broadly speaking,” said Evans, “it is in a way a problem of morale and numbers against resources and wits. We have far better morale and slightly superior numbers. They command the resources of all Southern Europe, Egypt, and the East, and they still have pretty free access to those of South America. In this respect, unless we can cut them off from South America, they have an appreciable advantage over us. As to wits, I don’t mean that the Nordic peoples as a whole are inferior to them, but theirs is the advantage of well-laid plans and a marvelous centralized control. They’ve been planning this thing for fifteen years, and they’ve done a devilish good job of it. We have wits, but ours are not yet coördinated.
“Specifically, our problem is, first, to sink enough of their subs to ensure the flow of munitions from the Western Hemisphere to Northern Europe; that will enable us to maintain our present status; second, to engage and destroy their fleet, and thus break their control of the Mediterranean. That will be the hardest thing to do, for they don’t want to give us a crack at it; they won’t take a chance of battle unless they can feel sure of most favorable conditions; but if we can smash their fleet, the game is won.”
Mortimer listened thoughtfully, nodding his head in acquiescence as his friend talked; but Evans interrupted himself by saying, “Well, here I am giving my elders and betters a twopenny talk on the cosmos.”
“Don’t worry about that,” answered Mortimer; “it helps me to see the broader issues and clear my head of the mass of administrative detail. Go to it and give me some more.”
“Well,” resumed Evans, “as to the submarine problem—we’re in a position to go after them now. Obviously one of the first things to do is to put the very best radio compasses we can on shore stations at Punta Delgada, Madeira, and the Canaries, fitting them with first-rate amplifiers so that we can pick up subs as soon as they come out of Lisbon or Gibraltar. Then we can follow their movements by taking cross-bearings on them every time they use their radio, just as the British did with the German subs in the old days.”
“You know, I still have my doubts about this radio-compass business,” put in Mortimer. “Nothing has been done with it to restore the confidence of either Commander Rich or myself since the Sheridan affair. I still consider it on trial, and question the wisdom of spending much money installing such stuff on the islands.”
“No one has bothered to tell you what has been done,” said Evans, “but the fact is that the radio compasses all along the coast are continuing to give accurate bearings to incoming ships whenever the weather is thick, just as they have for the past twenty years, and the skippers for the most part continue to trust them. Anyway, this is a different issue. It doesn’t involve depending on the bearings for navigation of our ships; it is a matter of information about the enemy, and we can’t afford not to use it. The Bureau of Operations is counting on the use of these shore stations, and recognizes also the importance of working up coördinated hunting groups of destroyers to pick up the scent of the sub by crossed radio-compass bearings, and then, having thus located her roughly, to run her down with hydrophones.
“Now the shore stations have the longest range; they’ll spot a sub nearly a thousand miles away, but since their work is long-distance triangulation, they’ll place her only roughly. This will serve very well to tell the destroyers and chasers where to go to look for her, but by the time the information is transmitted and the hunting craft have got there, the sub may be too far away from the designated spot to find her with hydrophones. It is in this intermediate stage that the radio compasses on the destroyers themselves will come in. These have less range than the shore stations, but more than the hydrophones. Cruising in line, the destroyers may, by quick work, get cross-bearings on a sub sending signals anywhere within fifty miles, and thus locate her to within a mile. Then there’s a fair chance of picking her up with the hydrophones or magnetic detectors after she has submerged; and once that is done there’s a fair chance of covering her with a pattern of depth bombs, if the team-work is good.
“Now that sounds all very pretty, here by the fireside. But the pirate will have sense enough to fear these tactics, and will cut his messages down perhaps to one or two letters at a time, which won’t give the boys much chance for accurate bearings, no matter how quick they are. Then, he too has hydrophones, and when he hears us coming, he’ll slow down till you can’t hear him unless you’re almost on top of him. Still, with all these difficulties, it’s worth while playing that game for all there is in it. It may get us a few subs, if we keep it up on a big enough scale; even if it doesn’t, it will bother the sub and cramp her style, and it will give our boys the finest kind of drill.
“Now, there’s another matter which the difficulties of hunting with destroyers brings to my mind. In the war with Germany the chasers used to run their drifting patrols and hunts with all their listening gear, and once in a while, probably even less often than they thought, they picked up the sound of a sub. Then it was ‘up tubes’ and give chase; then ‘down tubes’ and listen again; a short burst of speed, then a dead stop, for they couldn’t listen under way. The chases had to be short, for Fritz could change course and speed, and then, while they were rushing to where they thought he was, they’d lose him. It was a sort of a hare and tortoise race, and you remember who won that. Our chasers to-day are somewhat faster and have much better hydrophones than those of 1918, but the problem is still much the same.
“Now, there’s a group of young officers in the Bureau of Engineering that have studied the history of those chaser maneuvers of 1918, and have put their heads together and worked out what looks to me like a real solution of that difficulty. More than one of the chaser captains of that time have said that, if they could have continued to listen instead of having to attack, they would have kept track of the sub’s whereabouts much longer than they could in the intermittent pursuit. Taking their cue from this fact, these officers have worked out a scheme which enables the listeners to keep on listening, and then to delegate other vessels to go to the spot they designate and surround the sub as a seiner surrounds a school of mackerel—with a string of nets. Their plan is to develop a fleet of ships like those that laid the great North Sea mine barrage—ships that will be fast and will have machinery for laying a net at very high speed. A sub can cut through an ordinary net and escape, so they have worked out plans for a net that will give notice if she tries it. It is to be studded with small telltale bombs just big enough to raise a fountain, but not big enough to add much to the weight and size of the net. These bombs, each in a section a hundred yards long, will be exploded by an electrical device if the sub touches any part of that section. It won’t hurt the sub, but it will tell you where she is, and you’ll have boats on hand with depth charges to do the hurting. The point is to establish quickly a barrier around the sub through which she can’t pass without giving away her position.
“These young officers have been fearfully keen on this thing and have worked out practical plans for machinery that will pay out the net at a speed of six knots, and the electrical gear for setting off the bombs.
“You can’t anchor the net, for the ocean’s too deep out there; it must be suspended from buoys. It needn’t reach down more than about three hundred feet, for no sub could dive under it at that depth without being crushed by water pressure. The tactical scheme is to have these boats, eight or ten of them, lie in wait at a central point with groups of drifting listeners scattered all around them, say, twenty miles away. When a sub is heard and located, the listeners call the net-layers by radio, and they go to the spot at a thirty-knot speed. As they approach they soon drown out the sound of the sub, but their speed and number enables them to surround the area in which she is known to be, for she won’t have time to go far from where she was last heard. Paying out their nets, they hem her in and keep the ring of nets closed round her till the area is raked with trailing wires and other electromagnetic detectors which will enable the chasers to concentrate their depth charges with the certainty of a kill.”
“That sounds like the most constructive—or rather artistically destructive—proposition I’ve heard yet,” said Mortimer with enthusiasm. “What are they doing about it? Have they submitted it to the Bureau Chief?”
“They’ve tried to, but they couldn’t get much attention paid to it.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve tried to find out why, but I can’t quite make it out. On the face of it the trouble seems to be the usual conservatism and inertia about taking up anything new. Did you ever read the article Sims wrote on Military Conservatism?”
“No,” said Mortimer.
“Well, in that, he showed how every great advance, such as gunpowder and steam, met with opposition, and chiefly from the men at the top, who, being the older men, had quite naturally lost the mental flexibility of youth. It may be just another case of that. Admiral Bishop is a conservative old buck. But then I suspect this project has never come to his attention. I think it’s been stopped lower down, and I fear there may be jealousy or politics or something else worse than conservatism involved in this.”
“Give me the names of the men who have developed the scheme,” said Mortimer, “and I’ll dig it out. I’ll make old Bishop find out about it and bring it up before the General Staff. I needn’t tell him how I heard of it; so nobody will get in trouble.”
Mortimer lost no time in bringing this matter before Admiral Bishop. The old man was averse to bothering his head with any new, wild-cat schemes, but, yielding reluctantly before Mortimer’s insistence, did secure from the authors of this one an outline of it for consideration by the General Staff. At the meeting of this body a number of objections were raised by the more conservative officers. The expense would be out of all proportion to the prospect of success; nets could never be paid out fast enough to surround the elusive sub; the thing had never been done—was unheard of; these new-fangled schemes never did work, anyway. With his lawyer’s skill, Mortimer questioned them as to all the difficulties in the way of the project, till he felt that some of the more progressive members were in favor of it, and the others weakening. Then, following this advantage, he showed them how lacking in the convincing quality all the objections had been, and virtually demanded and finally obtained their acquiescence in putting the plan into operation, overriding the final objections of Admiral Bishop in a way that caused this officer to be visibly incensed.
Engineering talent was set to work on the details of the scheme, perfecting the net studded with tiny bombs, and the machinery for paying it out at high speed from the moving ship. This latter being a purely mechanical problem, there was no lack of inventive skill available for bringing it to the production stage in record time. Provision was made for the safe recovering of the nets without detonating the bombs. Five fast liners, built and building, were taken over and rearranged for installation of additional boilers and the new gear. Three new ships were started building, specially designed for this service. Thus it was estimated that, during the autumn, eight ships capable of thirty knots would be ready to give this project a trial.
Mortimer requested Admiral Bishop to institute an investigation to find out why this important suggestion had been side-tracked. This quest proved most confusing; the original copy of the communication could not be found. Several engineer officers recalled having seen it, and one said he thought he had turned it over to Commander Rich to get his opinion. Commander Rich, on the other hand, said he was sure he had never seen it. In the end it was concluded that the paper had been pigeon-holed and then lost through the carelessness of some yeoman.
Mortimer told Evans the result of this investigation. Evans listened attentively, frowning as the unsatisfactory conclusion was reached. For some time he sat in silence; then he spoke:
“Sam, it’s a beastly uncomfortable thing to come to you with a criticism of my superior officer, but I don’t see how I can conscientiously dodge it. For some time I’ve been getting uneasy about Commander Rich, and this thing makes me more so.”
“What do you mean?” asked Mortimer.
“I doubt his loyalty.”
“That’s a pretty serious thing to say. What evidence have you?”
“Not much, I admit,” said Evans. “But do you recall that business about the British vacuum-tube transmitter? There seemed to be a peculiar discrepancy between his point of view as represented by the Admiral, and that which he himself took in the final show-down.”
“That was just a misunderstanding,” said Mortimer. “You’re too suspicious, Jim. Just get that out of your system.”
“Maybe I am. Just the same, I’d keep my eye on him if I were you.”
“That’s perfect rot,” said Mortimer. “Rich is one of the ablest and most dependable men in the service; the more I see of him the better I like him. You’d better quit suspecting him, and give him a little loyal support and coöperation yourself.”
Evans said no more; there seemed nothing more to say. He had a nasty feeling inside, and a change of subject seemed indicated.
Another project, made possible by the capture of the Azores, also engaged the attention of the Navy Department at this time. The completion of the new breakwater and harbor works at Punta Delgada had now made this an ideal base for destroyers, chasers, and other submarine-hunting craft; but even this harbor was not nearly big enough for the entire fleet of battleships and cruisers. If the fleet had to lie at anchor outside the harbor there must be some protection against attack by enemy submarines. Now, unless the place could be made safe for the entire fleet, its value as a base for anti-submarine operations was seriously impaired, for if a fleet of chasers set out from Punta Delgada to hunt in the direction of Gibraltar and no powerful ships were within call, a detachment of enemy cruisers could come out and destroy them. Destroyers supported by fast scout cruisers could sally forth in comparative safety, for their speed would enable them to retreat under the cover of the coast-defense guns if pursued by a superior force of the enemy. Submarines, too, could operate from the Azores in comparative safety, for they could hide at will. But the large flotillas of chasers now being commissioned and manned, good for only sixteen knots, would be exposed to grave danger if they operated far enough from their base to do any good.
It was at this point that the services of Heringham in Constantinople became a source of safety and strength. The combined fleet of the Allies could lie at Brest, and if at any moment, day or night, a force of enemy ships weighed anchor at Gibraltar, and started out through the strait, word of it would at once reach the Admiral at Brest, and in less than two hours the Allied fleet could be under way in search of them. This arrangement made it possible for chasers and other patrol craft, too slow to escape from enemy cruisers, to operate in waters nearer to Brest than to Gibraltar, but outside this area their helplessness in the face of attack by cruisers rendered their search for submarines unwise.
For this reason, as well as because of the strategic position of the place and the greater ease with which secrecy concerning the activities of the fleet could be maintained at such an isolated spot, it was most desirable to develop a base for the whole fleet at the Azores rather than in French or British waters. A plan was therefore developed to enclose the entire area between the islands of Saint Michael’s, Santa Maria, and Formigas, the most easterly group of the Azores, with a barrier of heavy nets reinforced with mines, and a system of detecting nets of wires which would at once reveal the approach of a submarine attempting to break through, and tell the observer at a central station on shore the very point at which the approach was made. Thus there would be a sheet of water roughly thirty miles by sixty, protected from attack by sea, with a fair anchorage for the entire fleet just south of Saint Michael’s. It was a large engineering project, but not too large for the end to be gained. This, it was estimated, would take till the late summer for completion.
In the mean time, Punta Delgada became the storm-center of all the patrolling and submarine hunting by swarms of destroyers, submarines, and seaplanes. Weather stations were established here and in all the other captured islands, manned by officers trained for this duty by Professor Jeremy, now holding the rank of commander.
As the spring wore on and the men on the patrolling craft learned how large the ocean was and how seldom any trace of a submarine could be found in its expanse, enthusiasm for the chase gave way to ennui and discouragement. A little success was sorely needed to put heart into both officers and men, worn as they were by the tedium of the long, dreary watches at sea.
Late in May, Evans and Mortimer motored out into the country some miles from Washington, and went for a walk together.
“I think I’m rather wasting time here in Washington,” said Evans. “I believe I’d find more to do now in the Azores.”
“I don’t see how we can spare you here, Jim,” answered Mortimer. “Seems to me we need you in the Bureau to help all these engineering developments;—not to mention your glittering generalities which I find rather helpful now and then.”
“I guess you can get along all right without any ‘glittering generalities’ from me. As for engineering developments, I find that I can’t get much of anywhere with Rich in charge of the Radio Division.”
“Still at odds with your chief? Forget it; buck up, and play the game with the organization as you find it.”
“I can’t help it,” said Evans. “There’s no use my trying to work here in the Bureau with him. He apparently stands for efficiency and progress; he agrees heartily to every constructive suggestion for improvement, yet somehow the necessary orders don’t get issued, or, if issued, don’t go into effect. I keep feeling that my hands are tied. But in spite of all this we’ve got enough material out to the Azores, so that if I could get there, I could shape it into what I want, unhampered by the obstruction that’s hindering me here. I know how it is from what I saw in 1918. There’s always less red-tape at the scene of actual warfare than there is in the Bureaus here. I’m sure that if I can get to Punta Delgada I shall be more nearly on my own, and can work to better advantage. There are lots of engineering possibilities there, and I can fix things up to my liking without this officious interference from above.
“Besides, it’s at Punta Delgada that the communication storm-center will be from now on. I feel sure I can be more useful tinkering with the apparatus in the fleet, and seeing that the boys use it right, than I can imparting spare calories to a swivel chair here in Washington. In particular, there are the radio-compass shore stations that we are installing in the various islands; the regular work of installation is going on all right, but there’s always a possibility of their not working as they should, and it’s really a physicist’s job to take care of that sort of thing. Then the apparatus must be accurately calibrated, and the personnel taught to use it quickly, and the machinery for transmitting the intelligence rapidly to headquarters and thence to the ships that can use it, must be organized, and organized well. For all that sort of work, I think it’s time to be moving a good many of your men of engineering ability out to the Azores where things are going on.”
“There’s no doubt,” said Mortimer, “that there’ll be plenty of engineering work to be done out there, and more and more as time goes on; and I can see the importance of having you as a physicist look over those radio compasses. But I should like to be able to keep in touch with you, and frequent messages from a warrant officer in the fleet to the Secretary would look kind of funny; you might get uncomfortably snubbed by some one.”
“I think I can get round that,” said Evans. “I’ll work out a method of dropping you a hint or a glittering generality now and then without even ruffling the surface. I learned one or two tricks from those fellows in London about faking telepathy. We could arrange a flying trip home if the occasion arose.”
“Well,” said Mortimer, “you’ve got away with lots of things a warrant officer’s got no business to, and they haven’t had to court-martial you yet. Go ahead and fix up your secret code and make your plans, and let me know when you’re ready to start.”
A few days later they met again. Evans reported himself ready to leave for the destroyer flotilla.
Mortimer said: “I wish you would look over the dramatis personæ in the fleet and size up who’s who as far as you can, especially when the main fleet gets out there, which will be some time in August. It’s hard for me to size them up from my desk in the department. If you are convinced that there’s anything radically wrong with the men at the top, give me one of your magic hints and I’ll send for you to come and tell me about it.”
They conferred at length over many phases of the great problem, arriving at a close and harmonious understanding on the main points of the task confronting the navy. It was arranged that Evans should be temporarily attached to a new destroyer that was about to sail for Punta Delgada, and on arrival, be attached to the mother-ship of the destroyer flotilla, a vessel similar to the oldMelvillethat lay at Queenstown in 1918, equipped with repair shops and other facilities for the care of the destroyers. Here he was to be technical assistant to the radio material officer; and in a letter from the Bureau of Engineering it was explained that he was to visit the shore stations and see that everything was installed according to the latest engineering developments.
“What about your method of communicating with me?” asked Mortimer.
“There are two expert radio aides (civilians) in the Bureau of Engineering, who are highly intelligent and preeminently discreet,” answered Evans. “Their names are Tompkins and Rand. Keep those men on the job in the Bureau, and if I have anything to tell you they’ll pass it on to you.”
“How will you manage that?”
“I’ll fix it somehow. All you’ll have to do is to keep those two men there. If anything happens to either of them, notify the Intelligence Bureau at once, and tell them to lose no time and spare no pains probing the matter; then watch your step. If one dies, let the remaining one choose his successor and teach him the technique.”
Four days later Evans reported on board a new destroyer setting out to join the flotilla at Punta Delgada. During the first part of the journey she assisted a cruiser serving as ocean escort for a great convoy of merchant ships loaded with munitions and food for the armies of Northern Europe; but when in mid-ocean, she was detached from the convoy, and, speeding up to twenty knots, laid her course for Punta Delgada.
It was in the middle of a beautiful June afternoon as the destroyer was gliding over a glassy sea bathed in sunshine, when the lookout first sighted the cloud-capped mountains of Saint Michael’s. As they approached and coasted along the southern shore of the island, the clouds rolled away revealing the soft yet striking outline of the range clad in semi-tropical verdure. Presently, some miles ahead, they could discern the town of Punta Delgada shining in the afternoon sun; then across the breakwater the masts of many ships, destroyers, and auxiliary craft. The town took shape, scattered over the steep, sloping hillsides around the old harbor. Nearer they came, and at last slid smoothly through the opening in the net into the great new harbor. Before them spread a panorama that might well gladden the eyes of all on board after nine long days on the barren ocean. Gay-colored houses in pink, yellow, and white stucco, in brilliant relief of sun and shadow, breathing an Old-World atmosphere, lined the shore, while strange and picturesque trees and gardens dotted the slopes receding to the capricious outline of the green hills beyond. It seemed as if a magician’s wand had conjured out of the sea a city of a far-off age and of another world. And in the foreground, tied two by two at mooring buoys, the long, lean American destroyers spoke of the grim business of war.
To Evans, drinking in the picture before him, it was hard to believe he was not in some strange dream. And being more impressionable than most men, his mood became that of a child witnessing for the first time a scene of fairyland artfully displayed on the theatrical stage.
To make the incongruity of the whole scene complete, a large American seaplane, returning from patrol, came whirring down out of the sky and lit on the harbor in a great splash of white foam, then taxied to her mooring. Rowboats, manned by natives of the town and loaded with pineapples and other tempting commodities, swarmed around the destroyer as she tied up to her designated buoy.
The sunlight on the hills and houses turned golden and then red, and finally disappeared. A pink sunset faded into twilight, and just before dark six destroyers cast off from their moorings, slipped out silently through the opening in the net and headed to sea on a hunting patrol.
Early next morning Evans went aboard the mother-ship of the flotilla and presented his orders at the Flag Office. When they had received the endorsement of the Chief of Staff, he was instructed to report for duty to Lieutenant Larabee, the radio material officer, a man of twenty-eight, whose technical assistant he was to be.
“Gunner Evans,” said Larabee. “Yes, we had a letter about you from the Bureau. I understand you have been assisting in some of the newer engineering developments there, and that you’ve had previous experience in a physics laboratory.”
Evans assented.
“There’s one thing you’ll have to learn on this job,” continued Larabee; “conditions afloat are very different from those in a laboratory on shore; a lot that goes there won’t go here.”
Evans received the advice with thoughtful deference, and as they discussed the problems before them, he studied with the closest scrutiny the mentality of the young officer, nearly twelve years his junior in age, but three grades his senior in rank. Neither in this conversation nor for long afterward did Larabee discover that Evans had served many months as a radio operator on a destroyer in the war zone during the war with Germany twenty years before, nor did he dream that his age was such as to render this possible.
In pursuance of the suggestion Evans had made to Mortimer, several men who had played important parts in the engineering developments at home were soon transferred to Punta Delgada—not without remonstrance on the part of those who had come to rely on their efficiency—and were now absorbed in the increasing organization at this point. In this way preparation was made to bring the engineering skill of the service into play at what would soon be the center of all operations. Among others a chief radio electrician of exceptional skill and understanding, a man Evans had picked before leaving Washington, to be his assistant, arrived and reported as he had done, for duty under the radio material officer.
On board the mother-ship there was a small radio laboratory or test shop where experiments with new apparatus could be conducted. Evans saw its present limitations and future possibilities (provided more space was available), possibilities of work of the first importance in the perfection of the technique of communication in all its complex phases. Larabee, eager to make the radio material service of the flotilla as good as possible, welcomed the assistance of a handy and competent radio gunner, and began to put up a strenuous fight for the needed space. The ordnance officers wanted the space and objected, and the executive officer backed them up. But at last, spurred on by his increasing sense of the importance of what he sought, Larabee succeeded in showing the ordnance officers how they could manage without the coveted space, and in convincing the executive officer of his need of it. Then Evans had a free hand to equip the laboratory to his heart’s content. Cabled requests went out to Washington for new supplies and apparatus, but during the necessary weeks of waiting Evans was never at a loss for methods of utilizing such crude materials as he could pick up in the machine shop or on the scrap-heap.
Nor was his time all spent in this laboratory: his duties took him aboard nearly every ship in the flotilla, where he scrutinized the condition of the apparatus, questioned the operators, stimulated their interest, and set them thinking as they had never thought before. Most of the destroyer skippers noticed an increase in efficiency in the handling of communications by the men under them, and some patted themselves lustily on the back for it. It was not long after his arrival that he had made the round of the radio-compass stations on shore, not only in the Azores, but also at Madeira and the Canaries. On these excursions he tested and calibrated each station with a destroyer circling at a distance of two or three miles, sending signals; and he spared no pains to satisfy himself that the operators had a thorough understanding of their duties, and knew full well that on their vigilance rested large issues.
But after his first general survey of the flotilla as regards its efficiency in communications, Evans found time for further research which this survey had suggested to him; and he was never so happy as when thus engaged. Sometimes, as a result of an idea either in the realm of electrical theory or of tactical expediency, the need of intensive development of new or modified apparatus would appear; then an engineering research, which in peace-time would require months, was completed in five or six days. Evans in his dungarees would work day and night with his skilled assistants, often risking death among wires charged with a thousand volts or more. No time was spent writing detailed protocols of experiments. Results were carried in his head with only occasional notes scribbled on scraps of paper or on the walls of the test shop. The radio chief who assisted him became fired with his enthusiasm and worked ungrudgingly for long hours which would ordinarily make most petty officers grumble loud and long.
In the warrant officers’ mess Evans was more often the listener than the speaker. When occasion offered, he would draw out the older men on the specialties in which they were expert, and often would guide the conversation into a discussion of coördination, in which each man was stumped to show how his particular duty fitted into the organization of the navy as a whole, and thereby was led to see his own function in a new light, thus acquiring an increased sense of his responsibility. There was one old boatswain named Jenks nearly sixty years of age, a veteran of both the Spanish and the German wars, a relic of the old type of seaman that is all too scarce. Evans delighted in leading him to open his rich storehouse of experience, and in drawing from him his old-time navy lore. Jenks in his turn found Evans sympathetic, and talked with him as he did with few other men, revealing a shrewdness and wisdom which had often stood him and the navy in good stead.
To the mess as a whole Evans remained something of an enigma. They saw him in his room manipulating a slide-rule and jotting down figures on a scrap of paper, softly humming a tune to himself the while. Few of them had ever seen a slide-rule, and from his frequent use of it they inferred that he had had more schooling than most of them; but in general they found him rather uncommunicative as to his past history.
For exercise and relaxation Evans frequently went ashore and took a walk among the hills. On his first shore liberty the sense of foreign picturesqueness came over him more than ever as he approached the antique landing in the center of the town, where at the water’s edge was an array of architecture so different from anything in the Anglo-Saxon world. On shore he found himself in a strange world indeed. Strange sights, sounds, and smells greeted him everywhere; barefooted men were leading donkeys laden with goods about the narrow, dirty streets. And after flooding his senses with a riot of impressions of an alien world, it was with a distinct sense of homecoming that he returned to his quarters aboard the mother-ship of the flotilla.
He had not been at Punta Delgada long before he discovered a spot easy of access, walled off from the town, in which, among the most restful and soothing surroundings, he could give himself over to relaxation or thought. This was the ancient Borge garden, created by one of the Portuguese nobles who flourished on these islands in the far-off days of their feudal prosperity. Now neglected, overgrown with weeds, this antiquated paradise reflects its former glory with a stronger appeal than if it were kept up with a lavish hand, much as the ivy-covered ruins of England tell their story all the better for their ruined state.
In the Borge garden there are trees of the strangest, most fantastic character—trees with pudgy leaves, trees with shapes one would never believe could really exist. Here and there are deep grottoes with giant tree-ferns growing from their depths; zigzag stony paths lead down into them or through tunnels or over bridges artfully contrived to conceal as far as possible their artificial nature. Fascinating glimpses into the depths of tropical greenery are thus given emphasis by their skillful setting. Surmounting the rest of the garden high up on the slope is an ancient watch-tower commanding a view of the sea. Crumbling steps overgrown with weeds lead up the side to its summit. Beside it stands a majestic and venerable tree, a conifer of the cedar or cypress group, which must have stood there for centuries casting its deep shade on the old watch-tower. Framed under its great lichen-covered branches, the wide expanse of the blue ocean makes the fairest of pictures—one on which the eye can rest and never tire.
Evans made friends with the old barefoot gardener who opened the great gate in the garden wall, and by signs and gestures allayed his suspicions till the old man admitted him cheerfully whenever he knocked.
Here, when his brain was taxed and overwrought, he would seek the quiet of the garden and give himself over to rest or meditation. Sometimes he would wander through the depths of the great fern grottoes, but oftener he would climb to the top of the watch-tower and sit gazing off over the blue expanse of sea, as perhaps the lookout had done in other wars of a bygone age. Many a problem in the borderland of science and strategy which harassed him in the turmoil of life aboard ship yielded a solution to his mind unfettered and free as it was when he sat on the watch-tower.
The Borge garden was inhabited by numerous small birds that sang melodiously among the trees and shrubs, and so doing enhanced immeasurably the charm of the place. Evans was no ornithologist, but he was a lover of all wild life, and especially of birds. He took with him to the garden liberal stores of crumbs which he scattered on the ground about him. Little by little the more venturesome of his feathered friends grew accustomed to his presence, and would light on the ground beside him, till finally one or two actually came and ate from his hand. He would talk and whistle to them, and in course of time, whenever they heard his voice, they would fly to the old tree by the watch-tower and there await the social feast which he never failed to bring. He in turn found a deal of cheer in the companionship of his bird friends. And so it was that when disheartened or exasperated with inertia and officiousness, the snarls of red-tape in which supply clerks entangled much-needed gear, or the stupidity and indifference of radio operators whom he tried to instruct, he found in the little birds of the garden a solace that made life more livable, and more than once helped him over the hard places.