Part 14

The quartermaster ran up the bridge ladder. Doc gazed over the chart-rail down to the deck, up and around on the ship. "Doggone!" he breathed. "I am the ranking--I'm the only naval officer present." Then he shook his head and bent to his patient. He might have the rank, but the last thing he was going to do was to butt in on any regular ship's officers.

The disabled ship went on to her new course, south half east magnetic, with the destroyer steaming twenty-knot circles around her. And late in the afternoon they made the convoy. By night she was tucked in the rear of twenty other ships, the doctor and his emergency staff still aboard. They were to remain aboard until the steamer made port.

That same night something happened. On the steamer they did not know just what it was. They saw a column of white, a column of black--those who happened to be looking--another column of white, from the big ship of the fleet. And then dark came. There were radios flying about, but they were code messages and the radio man could not decode them because the first thing the steamer captain had done that morning when it looked as though the U-boat was going to make them take to the boats was to heave the code-books overboard. In the morning they would know.

Morning came, but with it not a ship in sight. Of twenty ships and a group of destroyers the night before, not one now. It was his signal-officer who thought it out first. "U-boats thick last night, sir, and the convoy must 'a' got orders to disperse or else change course," he said to the doctor.

"That sounds like good dope to me too." He turned to the steamer's captain. "Where were you bound, sir?"

"To Havre."

The doctor could see nothing else but to proceed to Havre, and on a zigzag course. The old captain did not know about the zigzagging; he had never done any zigzagging and did not know why he should now--besides, it mixed his reckoning all up.

The doctor said he would fix the zigzagging part of it, and, telling his hospital steward to have a special eye out for the very sick man, went into the chart house and proceeded to explain the zigzagging stuff. He paused to recall all he had ever learned while elbowing the 352's navigator over the chart-table; also the answers he had got to his questions while so doing.

You steer 45 degrees off the course you really want to make for so many minutes and then you steer 90 degrees from that for the same number of minutes back toward the course you really want to make--see, so--and that gives so many minutes to the good--see. That was one way.

"How many minutes?" asked the captain.

Doc had to stop and think that over. "Twice the square of the total minutes--no, no. Take twice the sum of the squares of the minutes on the two legs--and get the square root and then you have the hypothenuse of the two sides of the triangle; that is, you have the number of minutes' steaming you make good on your real course."

The old skipper knew nothing of square roots or hypothenuses or anything that looked like 'em, and he had always laid his course out by compass points.

"All right," said Doc, and after a while laid out the zigzag courses in compass points.

The old fellow did not quite like it, so all that day Doc alternated between his bad patient and the bridge to keep the skipper reassured about the zigzagging. Also he urged the crew to have a special watch out for U-boats.

That night Doc and the seasoned signal quartermaster stood alternate watches on the bridge. Doc would take a nap; the quartermaster would take a nap; between them they were figuring to keep a sort of official navy lookout. There were ship's crew men on the lookout too, but the reaction from the shelling had set in. Doc used to find them asleep in the bridge wings.

Just before dawn of the second morning Doc saw a shadow looming on their starboard bow. He had another look. It was another steamer--a big one. She was drawing nearer. "See that?" he called to the man at the wheel.

"See what?" sort of drowsed out the man at the wheel.

The trusty quartermaster from the 352 was getting a wink under the bridge-rail. Doc yelled to him, at the same time grabbing up the megaphone and roaring into the night air: "Where you-all going? Where the devil you-all going? Can't you-all see where you're going? Keep off--keep off."

"Can't you see where you're going?--keep off yourself."

By that time the signal quartermaster was awake and bounding across the bridge. He grabbed the wheel and began to spin it around. The ship's bow turned. Doc saw the big hulk go by him in the dark.

"Good work," said Doc. "How'd you spot him so quick?"

"I didn't spot him, sir. I don't see him yet. I went by the sound of his voice."

"Special little angel perched up aloft to look out for Jack when at sea--" sang Doc. "I thought that was a nursery rhyme. Now I know it's true. Between you and me, quartermaster, we'll get this ship to port yet."

They finished that night and the next day without seeing anything or having anything happen. Nothing except the argument about the forward compartment.

Among the shells which had come aboard the steamer was one which had punched a fine big hole in her bow. The ship's crew had put a plug there which worked all right till the ship took to rolling, which it did this day. The hole was just at the water-line. Before they knew anything about it there was the plug gone and the water up to a man's knees in the forward compartment. Doc said it should be stopped.

The old skipper wanted to know who was going to stop it. His crew? No, sir. He wouldn't ask any of 'em to go down there--besides, they wouldn't go. They were all used up since the battle with the U-boat. It made no difference if the ship sank. He'd had so much trouble that trip anyway that he wasn't too sure he wouldn't just as soon see her sink. He wasn't too sure they wouldn't all be better off in the boats. The U-boat had ordered them into the boats, and, only the destroyer had come along when it did, they would 'a' taken to the boats, and then they'd 'a' been picked up and no more watches or ships or holes in the for'ard compartment to worry about.

There was nothing left but for Doc to call for volunteers from among the gun crew. They were bluejackets, and their only complaint on the trip had been that the U-boat's guns had outranged their guns. They volunteered in a body--even the three wounded members. Doc took all the sound ones and went down into the forward compartment with a mattress and some scantling he found in the hold. The water was by then about up to the men's waists. It was hard, cold work, but they got it done--the mattress stuffed into the hole and the scantling shoring it up. It still leaked, but not much--a little auxiliary steam in there at intervals did not quite keep her dried out, but it kept her head above water, so that was all right. All that day she was a lone steamer plugging her halting way over a wide sea. Seven knots was her speed, and all hands tickled to be making that because of weak places showing from time to time in her steam department--damages by shell fire which they did not appreciate properly at first.

They were nearing the coast of France. They would have to make a landfall soon, and running without lights, as they were, made things hard, so the old skipper began to talk to Doc. If the doctor didn't mind, he would take full charge of the ship himself. She was a big ship with a three-million-dollar cargo, and if anything happened her, the owners would naturally look to him, the master, for it.