The Battleship Boys' First Step Upward Part 5

"Dead amids.h.i.+ps. Smash another in the same place and you'll have her on the way to Davy Jones's ditty box."

Again the forward starboard seven-inch spoke.

"Miss," came the warning. "Poor work. Cease firing and give the after turret's crew a chance."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The after-turret's crew sprang to their work with a shout of joy. In an incredibly short time after receiving the command, their weapon began to roar, shot following shot, as if they were engaged in record target practice for the silver cup.

"Hit," came the call down the speaking tube after each shot.

Projectile after projectile landed in the hull of the doomed schooner.

"There she goes!" cried the captain, catching a faint glimpse of the "Oriole" as she slipped down a great sloping hill of water. "That's the last of her."

"Shall we give her another round, sir?"

"No; cease firing. She is no doubt broken to pieces by our shot by this time. You do not see her, do you?"

"No, sir. The searchlight doesn't seem able to find the schooner."

"Then we need trouble ourselves no further about her. It's a good job, Coates," smiled the captain, rubbing his palms together in keen satisfaction. "We have rescued the crew of a disabled s.h.i.+p in one of the worst gales that I ever saw on the Atlantic coast. We have lost none of our own men and only one of the seamen belonging to the schooner. Of course I'm sorry that he was lost, but we did all that human beings could accomplish."

"We did, sir."

At that moment the captain's orderly approached.

"What is it?" demanded the captain, observing that the orderly wished to say something to him.

"Seaman Sam Hickey asks permission to speak to the commanding officer, sir."

"What does Seaman Hickey wish to say to me?"

"He did not say, sir."

"I will see him."

Sam, his red hair standing straight up, for he was hatless as well as coatless still, approached the captain, came to attention and saluted.

"Well, lad, what is it?"

"I have not seen my friend Dan Davis since the boats returned, sir," he said.

"What's that?"

"I find that Davis did not return in either the whaleboat or the cutter. He went back to save some one that the girl begged him to save. I've made inquiry and learn that the somebody was a miserable parrot."

"Seaman Davis on that schooner?" demanded the captain in a startled voice.

"Yes, sir, I think so, sir."

"And we have shot the decks from under him with our seven-inch guns!"

groaned the captain.

He immediately ordered that the searchlights try again to pick the schooner up. But no search revealed her. By reason of the violence of the gale, the battles.h.i.+p, for her own safety, had been compelled to steam some distance away. But she lay to throughout the night, and only when the early daylight revealed nothing of the schooner was she headed for the Delaware Breakwater.

CHAPTER IV

LOOKING DEATH IN THE FACE

We left Dan curled up in a bunk, wondering how long it would be before the schooner would go to the bottom.

"What's that?" exclaimed Dan, starting up from the narrow berth on which he was sitting.

He had heard a crash and felt a jar that was different from the shocks he had been experiencing for the last half hour.

Suddenly the Battles.h.i.+p Boy leaped from the berth, splas.h.i.+ng into the water knee deep, as another shock, more violent than the other, set the doomed schooner trembling from stem to stern.

"Another mast has gone by the board," he groaned.

"Bang!"

The sound was accompanied by a ripping and rending of woodwork as if the vessel were being torn apart by some strange, wonderful power.

"I can't stand this any longer. I've got to go on deck and find out what is occurring, even if I am swept overboard. I'm not going to die down in this hole anyway. It's no way for a jackie in Uncle Sam's Navy to end his life. Tommy, you'll have to get along the best way you can.

Good-bye if I do not see you again."

There was a note of regret in the Battles.h.i.+p Boy's tone, as his glance lingered half regretfully on the ugly face of the parrot.

"Lubber!" retorted the indignant parrot.

"I guess I am all you accuse me of being," answered Dan with a mirthless laugh.

Running up the companionway he crouched under the hatchway, listening in order to determine whether a wave were was.h.i.+ng over the s.h.i.+p or just leaving the stern. Having decided on this, the lad quickly threw open the hatch and sprang out on deck.

A cold blast of salt spray smote him full in the face. Dan cleared his eyes and glanced about him inquiringly. He was able to see but little of deck or mast, but he felt quite sure that only one of the latter had been left standing.

There was a sudden angry flash off to port.

"Lightning," muttered Dan. "We're going to have a thunderstorm to add to my other troubles."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the s.h.i.+p received a shock so sudden and violent as to throw the boy flat on his face on the deck.

"That's the time we were struck," he cried, springing up.

Indeed the "Oriole" had been struck, but not in the way that Dan Davis thought. Instead of being struck by lightning another projectile from the seven-inch gun had torn its way through the stricken schooner.