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CHAPTER XXVIII.
A HIT WITH CHAOSITE
"General battle practice to-day," cried a bosn's mate, as he hastened forward through the scrubbing stations the next morning.
Ned and Herc exchanged glances above their swabs.
At last they were to see what actual battle conditions were like. The practice hitherto had been merely target practice and mine-laying – the latter being dummies, of course. To-day, they had learned earlier, the ships were to be "cleared for action" just as in actual service, and steaming at eighteen knots, were to fire at the targets as they steamed by as if they were repulsing a hostile fleet. No wonder the jackies were on the tiptoe of expectation.
As for the two chums, they were in high spirits. Promotion loomed ahead of Ned, and Herc wished him success with all the warmth of his generous heart. Not a thought of envy entered his mind. He was as delighted as Ned himself over the big chance that had come to the Dreadnought Boy.
Each of my readers can imagine for himself what the two boys had had to say the evening before, when they had been reunited; and Ned had to tell his adventures over and over again, till Herc advised him to invest in a phonograph and talk his narrative into it for indefinite reiteration. "Pills" had patched Ned's injured leg so deftly that it hurt him hardly at all, and the doctor's suggestion that he go on the "binnacle list," otherwise the sick roll, had met with Ned's unqualified disapproval.
"I'm fit for duty. I want to do it, sir, if possible," he had said quietly but firmly, when the doctor suggested that he rest up for a few days.
The doctor, a veteran of thirty years' service, had thrown up his hands in amazement.
"I've been in the navy for more years than you've seen, my boy, by a long shot," he exclaimed, "and I never heard a seaman talk like that before. Well, if you want to work, go ahead, and my blessing go with you."
"I hope that young man is quite right in his head," the man of medicine had muttered to himself, as he heard the door of his sanctum closed by the first bluejacket he had ever met who was not anxious to avail himself of the restful idleness afforded by being on the "binnacle list."
Immediately after breakfast the Manhattan was a scene of the liveliest activity.
Rails came down and were stowed. Boats were lowered, ventilators shipped, war nets rigged, and every object on the deck that was not an absolute fixture vanished. The same thing occurred on other vessels of the fleet, in obedience to the flagship's signalled order:
"Clear for action."
It was like stripping human fighters for a ring contest.
Bugles shrilly sang the order from ship to ship of the squadron. While the smiling jackies bustled about on deck, stewards and orderlies below were stowing pictures and bric-a-brac between mattresses and placing all the ship's crockery and glassware in places where it was not in danger of being jarred to fragments by the earthquake-like detonations of the big guns.
In the meantime officers had invested themselves in their full-dress uniforms with side arms, and an hour after the order had been first transmitted the signal to "Up Anchor" fluttered out from the halliards of the flagship.
Aboard the Manhattan especially excitement ran at high tension, for Mr. Varian himself had come aboard that morning in a shore boat, and it was an open secret that the big twelve-inch gun, fitted with his Chaosite breech – was to receive its first sea test.
The first sight that greeted the eyes of Herc and Ned, reporting for duty in their turret as the squadron got under way beneath a pall of black smoke, was the unveiling, so to speak, of the inventor's masterpiece. Mr. Varian and Lieutenant Timmons, the ship's gunnery officer in command of the turret, had their heads together over the intricate piece of machinery as the two Dreadnought Boys entered the steel-walled box, in which they were practically a part of the machinery.
The inventor greeted them with a kindly nod. Perhaps the thought shot into his mind that had it not been for the pluck and clear-headedness of one of the Dreadnought Boys, he might not have been there.
"Is there any news, sir?" Ned asked respectfully, as soon as he got a chance to speak to the inventor.
"No. The launch that was sent to intercept the Pulsifers' vessel has not yet reported, but we may hear from her at any time now."
"Let us hope that the rascals haven't got a start and boarded some passenger vessel at sea," put in Lieutenant Timmons.
As the officer joined in the conversation Ned saluted and went to another part of the turret. It is not naval usage for an enlisted man to converse with an officer, and Ned was far too well-trained a young man-o'-warsman to break any rule, even the unwritten ones, which in the navy are almost as numerous as the codified regulations.
The excitement under which all hands labored was, however, far too keen to allow even the thoughts of the Pulsifers' capture to interfere with present duty.
Especially was this the case on two of the vessels of the squadron – the Idaho, the holder of the coveted meat-ball, and, as has been mentioned, the Manhattan, every jackie on board of which vessel longed with his whole soul to see the gunnery flag flying from the Dreadnought's main.
The scores stood even between the big guns of the two battleships now, and the open secret that the morning practice was to be made, in large part, with the Varian gun and explosive made the Manhattan's jackies fearful that they might lose, after all.
Jim Cooper, nervous and high-strung as ever, crouched in his seat beside the big weapon as the charge was rammed home and the breech slapped to on the heavy load of Chaosite, which the two Dreadnought Boys beheld for the first time. It was a pinkish, crystalline-looking substance, and its inventor claimed, as safe to handle as ordinary clay, which it resembled in its plasticity. Just to show its properties, before the charge was placed, the inventor picked up a chunk of the explosive and compressed it in his hands. He moulded it into several different shapes, and concluded the exhibition by throwing it on the flooring of the turret with force enough to have detonated a charge of dynamite.
"There is only one danger I apprehend from it," he had explained to Lieutenant Timmons, "and that is in the event of a 'flareback.' But under such conditions there is no powder made that is safe."
In reply to the officer's questions, the inventor explained that Chaosite was a slow-burning explosive, and if the much-dreaded flareback ever occurred in a gun in which it was being used, blazing particles of the freed explosive would be scattered about the turret. As Chaosite would only explode when confined, these particles would glow like hot coals till they burned out. The deadly peril consisted in the fact that the doors of the ammunition hoist opened directly into the turret. There were safety shutters to the hoist, but in action the reloading followed so fast on the firing of the guns that there was little chance of the safety devices being used.
The shaft of the ammunition hoist led directly down to the ammunition table below the water-line on which the explosive was piled, ready to be shot upward on electric elevators. Alongside the ammunition tables were the open doors of the ship's magazine. It does not require vivid imagination to picture what would be the result of blazing particles of a substance like Chaosite dropping down the hoist onto the powder and explosives piled below. Quick and utter annihilation would follow. Not a soul of the eight hundred odd crew and forty officers would stand any but the smallest chance of salvation.
The Dreadnought Boys, as well as the rest of the crew in the turret, were interested listeners to the conversation. All of them knew what a flareback was. One had occurred on the Georgia a year before, costing two lives. It is usually caused by fragments of burning powder being left in the chamber of the gun after a charge has been fired. An electric blower is attached to the big guns of Uncle Sam's navy, which is supposed to thoroughly clean the chamber after each discharge; but it is not careless sailor-proof, and occasionally the newspapers bear dreadful testimony to the result of a flareback, which occurs when the new load is ignited by the left-over fragments of the old one.
But the talk between Mr. Varian and the officer was suddenly checked.
"Boom!"
The flagship had fired, and, as the glass brought to bear by Lieutenant Timmons showed, had missed the first target.
At the distance of a mile and a half the targets, with their tiny boats bobbing at a safe distance, looked extremely small. Shooting at a potato on a fence post at twenty rods with a small rifle is easy compared to the task before Uncle Sam's gunners.
"Now, Cooper, steady, my lad!"
Lieutenant Timmons' voice sounded strained and harsh as the gun pointer squinted through his telescope and depressed his pointing lever ever so little. Already the range had been signaled from the fire-control wells.
The Manhattan was quivering to the speed of her engines, rushing her stripped form past the targets at eighteen knots.
Every man of that gun crew was under as painful a tension as the officer. As for the inventor, his face took on a deadly pallor as he leaned against the rear wall of the turret. In a few moments now he would know if his invention was a failure or a glorious success.
A tiny signal light – the message from the firing room glowed.
Cooper looked round. His wrinkled face was grotesquely knotted, like an ape's, in his excitement. His hand shook, but there was a glitter in his eyes that showed he meant to get that target.
"Brace yourselves, men!" warned the officer.
The boys stood as they had been taught, their knees slightly bent, so as to be springy. As they got the last order they stuffed cotton in their ears. Otherwise, the drums would have been shattered by the discharge.
"All ready, sir," breathed Cooper.
"Fire!"
There was a sharp click from the electric firing switch and a tiny spurt of bluish flame.
A shock like that of an earthquake followed. The mighty explosion seemed to rend the turret.
It had not died out before the glasses of the gunnery officer, the inventor and the gun-pointer were bearing on the distant target and the boats scurrying toward it. From the bridge and the quarter deck similar scrutiny was brought to bear.
Chaosite was almost smokeless, so their vision was not obscured, as with the old-fashioned powder – even the so-called "smokeless" making quite a smother.
"Hit, sir!" shot out Cooper dryly, as the signal man in the target boat wig-wagged the news.
"Now let the Idaho folks get busy!" cried the delighted gun crew.
The new explosive and the new gun had proven themselves one of the biggest naval successes of many a day.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE STUFF A JACKIE'S MADE OF
Hastily the gunnery officer scribbled a note and handed it to Herc.
"Here, my man, take this to Captain Dunham," he said, thrusting the paper into Herc's hand.
The red-headed boy was off like a flash, and a second later the captain, who had already witnessed the signaling of the successful hit, was reading the details of the wonderful results achieved with the new gun.
He detained Herc several minutes while he asked him numerous questions about the handling of the gun, all of which the boy answered so intelligently as to bring nods of approbation from the group of officers surrounding the commander of the Manhattan on the vessel's flying bridge.
By the time Herc started back for the turret, the Manhattan was close upon the second target.
"I've got to hurry," thought the boy, quickening his pace.
But before he had more than reached the midship section of the Dreadnought another mighty shock set her stout frame aquiver, and Herc knew another shot had been fired.
"Another hit!" he heard a shout go up an instant later. "We've got the Idaho folks lashed to the mast. They missed the first target."
But even as the cry reverberated along the decks there came another sound that struck terror to the heart of the Dreadnought Boy.
It was a heavy, smothered explosion that seemed to come from within the turret itself. At the same instant great clouds of yellow-colored smoke began to roll from the top ventilators.
"It's a flareback!" Herc heard old Tom shout. "Heaven help the poor souls in there!"
A flareback!
What the words meant Herc knew only too well. In the poisonous fumes of the burning Chaosite, vomited backward from the big gun's breech, there was quick, sure death.
Suddenly the small door in the barbette of the turret opened, and four half-crazed, reeling men staggered out, bearing a limp form of a fifth. It was Jim Cooper, the gun-pointer, they carried. Blackened and almost unrecognizable as the men were, the look of blank horror on their faces burned itself into Herc's mind.
"Where's the lieutenant and Mr. Varian? Where's Ned Strong?" the jackies shouted, as they crowded round the staggering men. The survivors could only wave their limp arms back toward the inferno from which they had emerged.
"B-b-blown to b-b-blazes!" gasped one in a choked voice.
All at once, and before Captain Dunham and the officers could reach the scene, a red-headed figure ripped off its blouse, and, wrapping it about its head, plunged on all fours into the small door from which the smoke-blackened five had emerged.
It was Herc Taylor.
"Stop that man!" shouted Captain Dunham, as he arrived, just in time to see Herc vanish in the smoke.
An ensign plunged forward. Half a dozen bluejackets followed him.
"No, stop! Come back!" shouted the captain. "Enough lives have been sacrificed."
Reluctantly the men came back. Tears rolled down the ensign's face as he begged to be allowed to enter the turret. But the commander was firm. No more lives would he have thrown away. For that Herc was doomed to the same death as it seemed sure had overtaken the officer, Mr. Varian and Ned Strong, seemed a definite certainty.
"Signal the flagship of the accident, Mr. Scott," ordered the captain, whose face was set and white, but whose voice was steady as if he were issuing a routine order.
"Aye, aye, sir."
The executive officer issued the necessary orders.
A second later the boom of the Idaho's gun sounded.
Another miss.
"The Manhattan wins the meat ball!" shouted some jackie far back in the throng of anxious-faced, pallid men.
"Stow that, you lummox!" growled old Tom, and his admonition was echoed angrily by a dozen tars. It would have fared hard with that jackie if they could have laid hands on him.
The minutes rolled by and still there came no sign from within the turret.
An ensign, despatched below by the captain, had reported that not a single spark had dropped down the hoist.
"Gentlemen, that means that there was a hero in that turret!" exclaimed the captain. "Before death came he closed those doors and in all probability saved the ship."
The others nodded. It was not a situation in which words seemed appropriate.
From the turret ventilators little smoke was now issuing. If any of the four men inside that steel-walled trap remained alive, they stood a fighting chance now.
Suddenly the jackies set up a roar.
From the turret door there staggered a black, weird figure; its clothes hung in shreds and blood streamed from a dozen cuts and bruises. In its arms this reeling figure carried another scarecrow-like form, the latter half-naked, like its bearer.
The first figure turned toward the dumfounded group of officers with a ghastly attempt at a smile on its blackened face, and then pitched forward with its burden.
Captain Dunham himself caught Ned Strong as he fell. Mr. Scott, the executive officer, as swift to act as his commander, had at the same instant seized hold of the limp form of Lieutenant Timmons, which the Dreadnought Boy had dragged from the jaws of death.
The doctor, a strange, soft light on his face, was still bending over his so strangely restored patients, when another roar came from the jackies. They seized each other and capered about like lunatics, and not an officer checked them. Temporarily the Manhattan housed a mob of cheering, yelling maniacs.
For through the turret door there now emerged a second figure, but this one bore a head of fiery red above his sooty countenance.
It was Herc, and with him he dragged out the collapsed figure of the inventor.
The Dreadnought Boys had beaten the flareback at its own grisly game.
From the scorched lips of Lieutenant Timmons, who, besides a few burns and the effects of the severe shock, had, like the others, miraculously escaped injury, the captain that evening heard the whole story.
The flareback had come like a bolt from the blue while the gun crew, still cheering Jim Cooper's second hit, were reloading.
The officer had felt himself blown back across the turret and smashed against the steel wall. The place was filled with acrid smoke and yelling, terrified men. Through the smoke glowed the blazing fragments of Chaosite that had been spurted back out of the gun.
Dimly the officer had seen Ned Strong stagger through the smoke toward the doors of the hoist, which were open preparatory to receiving another load. At the same time Lieutenant Timmons was trying with all his might to reach the same goal. He fell before he attained his object, however, and the last thing he knew was that he saw Ned seize the lever that swung the safety doors together and then collapse in a heap.
The inventor had fared much as had the officer, except that he succumbed to the fumes more quickly. He had managed, however, to open the ventilators to their full capacity by seizing, with his last conscious movement, the control that elevated them. This action undoubtedly contributed in large measure to saving the lives of those imprisoned in the death trap, for even Jim Cooper recovered, and a court martial later acquitted Lieutenant Timmons of all blame.
The joy that ran through the fleet when it was learned that not a single serious injury had resulted from the accident on the Manhattan may be imagined. Battle practice, which had stopped for that day, was ordered resumed on the morrow. But before that occurred another event happened which marked the end of one of the boldest attempts on record to steal one of Uncle Sam's most jealously guarded secrets.
The squadron was at anchor that evening, and retreat had just blown, when the wireless operator of the Dreadnought sought Captain Dunham with a paper in his hand.
It was a wireless from the launch sent after the Pulsifers and their gang, and reported that the yacht had been intercepted and boarded, off Boco del Toros, and that all the miscreants were captured.
The captain himself it was who sought out Ned and Herc, in the sick bay, and communicated the news to them. Both boys had been placed on the "binnacle list" under their protests; but, gritty as they were, they had been ordered to the ship's hospital peremptorily.
The rest of the gun crew shared their retreat, though each and every one of the rescued men declared that he was fit and able for duty. As a matter of fact, however, all of them had had a severe shock, and it was some days before they finally recovered and were about again receiving the congratulations of their shipmates. In the meantime battle practice went on, and the Manhattan eventually won the "meat-ball."
The boys received the news of the capture of the Pulsifers with a cheer, feeble but sincere. The summary court martial called to decide the cases of Carl Schultz, Silas, and Hank Harkins was convened the next day, when the crest-fallen prisoners were brought back on board. Schultz and Silas broke down under questioning and confessed that they were escaped prisoners, and were returned to the Illinois authorities to serve out life sentences for the murder of an old farmer near Springfield many years before.
Ralph Kennell was sentenced to serve ten years in a government penitentiary and to be dishonorably discharged from the service. Hank Harkins escaped with a dishonorable discharge, on the boys' intercession for him. As for the Pulsifers, they were given over to the Federal authorities, and are now serving long terms at the Federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia. Simultaneously with the discovery of the plot, the Baron vanished from Washington, leaving a disappointed and mystified fiancée. It was never learned for just what government the Pulsifers had been engaged in their work of spying and bribing.
How Hank Harkins got mixed up with the plotters he explained to the court martial. He had fallen into Schultz's and Silas' company in New York and gambled much of his money away to them. Afraid to write home for more, he had cast about for a way to recruit his finances, and when Schultz and Silas suggested that he join them in the work they had undertaken for the Pulsifers, he willingly agreed.
A few days after Ned and Herc were once more up and about – for they had been "binnacled" while the above events transpired – they were summoned aft to the captain's cabin, and told that on the return of the fleet to American waters they were to report to the Secretary of the Navy at Washington without delay. This event occurred in the early part of June.
The two lads, brown-faced and alert, but somewhat alarmed at the prospect of encountering such a mighty personage as the Secretary of the Navy, called at the department, according to instructions, and sent in their names.
"Send them right in," came a hearty voice, although there was a long row of visitors ahead of the Dreadnought Boys.
"And so you are the two lads that Captain Dunham thinks more about than any bluejackets in the service," began the secretary, a keen-faced, slender man, with a bristly black mustache and kindly, penetrating eyes. "These are the lads," he went on, turning to a portly man with a gray mustache and a pleasant smile, who stood behind him.
The stout man stepped forward, and as he did so the boys were struck with an air of dignity he bore about him, which was even more impressive than that which hedged the secretary about.
"My lads," he said, "I have heard with interest and deep admiration of your bravery, and, better than that, your cool-headedness when the accident that imperilled every soul on the Manhattan occurred. Had it not been for the pluck of one of you, a disaster which would have been historic in its horror might have occurred. I refer to your action in closing the safety doors, Strong.
"And you, Taylor" – Herc turned as red as his own thatch – "you are also deserving of the highest praise. Your action in entering what seemed a certain death trap was heroic in the extreme. The United States Government is proud of you both, and I am authorized to pin upon you, as unfading mementoes of your conduct, these."
From two blue plush cases the portly man with the kind smile drew two gold badges which he pinned on the breast of each Dreadnought Boy.
They were the coveted medals of honor.
"I know that you will wear them with the highest appreciation of their significance. I congratulate you both."
The portly man turned to the secretary with a smile.
"I think that is all, Mr. Secretary," he said.
"I believe so, Mr. President," said the secretary, rising and opening the door.
The boys' eyes fairly popped in their heads. Herc's amazement actually overcame his sense of discipline.
"Oh, sir, was that the President himself?" he quavered, as the secretary returned to his desk.
"It was," smiled the secretary, "and he was here at his own special wish. He ordered a detailed report made of your actions to him and investigated your case carefully. You young men have been rarely and highly honored. And now one thing remains to be done. You have received the highest honor the navy can confer for heroism displayed in line of duty. The government has for actions like yours a more substantial reward. I present you with these two purses, each containing a hundred dollars in gold."
The boys stammered their thanks somehow, while the room seemed to whirl round them. How they ever got out once more on to the sunlit Pennsylvania Avenue they often discussed afterward, but never arrived at any satisfactory conclusion.
"I guess we flew," Herc always says; "I know I felt as if I was walking on air."
The Dreadnought Boys had a two weeks' furlough before rejoining the fleet. They spent part of this in New York, seeing the sights, not forgetting a visit to the office where they had enlisted, and a portion of it in the old village, where, as may be imagined, they were the "heroes of the hour." Old Zack still exhibits a dented Canadian dime with which Ned presented him as a souvenir. The village band, not to be behindhand, learned to play a series of strange discords declared by them to be the navy's own, particular march, "Nancy Lee."
And so, with their hearts overflowing with patriotism, and a fixed determination ever to serve the flag and their country with an unflagging devotion, we will for the present take our leave of the Dreadnought Boys.
But many adventures, stranger and more fraught with peril than any through which they had yet passed, were ahead of them. A career in the navy is, even in "the piping times of peace," one full of excitement and action, and in their immediate future the boys were to realize this.
Life on board a torpedo-boat destroyer is a strange one in many ways, and the boys, in their coming experience on such a craft were destined to have this borne in on them. Their adventures on one of Uncle Sam's sea-tigers in a strange country and among strange people will be related in full in the next volume of this series, The Dreadnought Boys Aboard a Destroyer.
