CHAPTER IV
THE FACE IN THE LOCKET
SPORTS of whatever nature were now by the order of the admiral relegated to the past and all hands turned to for the coming target practice.
With the Atlantic fleet the days were now indeed full of hard, but useful work.
At eight o’clock in the morning the squadron would daily be under way. Drill after drill followed to perfect the officers in handling the unwieldy monsters, until even the ships seemed to have acquired an intelligence all their own.
Phil, standing his watch duty under Lazar, spent many instructive hours. To see the eight battle-ships steaming at twelve-knots speed, with a distance between the bow of one and the stern of the next of less than three ship lengths, was a sight calculated to inspire a feeling of wonder and admiration.
One day on the bridge, while the squadron was engaged in maneuvers, the real danger of this apparently simple drill was forcibly demonstrated. Phil, telescope in hand, was reading the fluttering flags hoisted by the flag-ship, calling out the numbers to Lazar, who was solving their meaning in the signal book he held in his hand.
Suddenly the battle-ship directly ahead in the column swung herself across the path of their ship. Phil saw the “dispatch flag,” a signal of breakdown, flying at her main masthead. The danger of a collision appeared so suddenly that he was bound to the spot. He was new to such an emergency. Lazar’s eyes were upon the ship ahead. His attitude was alert, his face calm and his manner deliberate.
“Port, hard aport,” he ordered, in a natural voice.
The heavily-shod bow of their ship pointed fairly amidships of the ship now nearly broadside in their path.
Slowly, painfully the “Connecticut’s” bow, in answer to her helm, moved along the length of the exposed and all but helpless white hull ahead. The ships drew together with such rapidity that it seemed to Phil a collision was inevitable.
Such were undoubtedly the thoughts on board the ship ahead. The shrill screech of her syren screamed across the water—a signal for all on board immediately to close every door and scuttle throughout the ship, so that in the event of a collision the water entering the wounded side would be prevented from spreading throughout the ship and endangering her buoyancy.
Lazar’s actions showed not a sign of indecision. He appeared as cool as if he were performing an ordinary maneuver of routine duty.
The “Connecticut” cleared her prostrated mate and swung by her swiftly—so close aboard that it seemed to Phil that they must have touched, then she followed in the wake of the other ships.
The boy was filled with admiration for the officer. He wondered if he would ever be able to use such remarkable judgment and remain as tranquil.
The more he saw of the older man the more he regretted their common enmity. As an officer he could not but command his respect. He was capable and self-possessed under the most trying circumstances, and yet, in spite of this enviable talent, he lacked the power of endearing himself to those under him. There was hardly a sailor on the ship who liked him. As a rule he was silent, yet the man who displeased him awakened a tongue so bitter that its sting covered the unfortunate one with shame and confusion. Those of his own mess admired him for his seamanlike ability, but despised him for his cynical and abusive disposition. He confided in no one, was friendly with none.
With such a personality Phil found himself closely associated, both in his duty on deck and also in the turret, where hard work was their daily portion. Lazar was ambitious, and he spared neither his men nor himself in building up such efficiency that the turret he commanded could not be outstripped in its record by any other of its class.
Phil had no real grounds for complaint. Lazar’s biting cynicisms hurt his pride, but only spurred him on to further efforts to perfect himself in his duties.
“Come out with us, Phil,” cried Sydney, the day before target practice, to his roommate, hard at work over some knotty problem. “You take things too seriously. Let it alone for awhile. We are going for a row in the dinghy, to the beach, and have a swim. Marshall, Morrison and Hill are going. You will just make a crew.”
Phil’s face brightened at the prospect, but remembering his work, he shook his head.
“No, I must work this out first. It’s very irritating. I know there must be a way, but I can’t see how to do it.”
“You are working entirely too hard,” replied Sydney, earnestly. “It isn’t worth it. What credit does Lazar give you? He never has a word to say unless it’s to correct a mistake in his sarcastic voice. It makes me angry to see you slave for him. Come out with us and harden up your muscles.”
But Phil could not be moved. His interest had been aroused in this work and he would master it before he gave in.
“After all,” he thought, when the pleasure seekers had gone, “what do I care for Lazar’s praise. He has taught me to curb my temper and I have worked harder than I thought myself capable in order to be free from his faultfinding tongue.”
The problem was only one of many Phil had fought out alone, and he finally saw the solution. Putting his drawings aside, he went up into the turret to test his ideas practically.
“Boyd,” he shouted as he reached the gun platform.
“Here, sir,” answered a slim, active looking sailorman, the gunner’s mate of the turret, emerging from under the guns, a number of tools in his begrimed fingers.
“Get O’Neil and come down below in the handling room. I have a scheme I want to try.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” answered Boyd with alacrity, putting his wrenches in the tool-racks. “I’ll get him and join you in a second, sir.”
He disappeared through the smoke hatch to the top of the turret.
Phil glanced about him. The objects which to him three weeks ago seemed so confusing were now wonderfully simple: the guns in their massive steel carriages, the weighty cylinders with their internal pistons and springs to check the force of the recoil when the guns are fired and send them back again to their normal position without undue jar to the structure of the ship. Here were the electric ammunition hoists, reeling a stout wire about a metal drum and this bringing up the heavy ammunition car with its burden of shell and powder from the handling room fifty feet below, and placing the charge directly in front of the open breech of the guns, to be driven home by the swiftly moving electric rammers. Phil saw below him the twin motors which turned the massive turret at the will of man. All these, to their minutest detail, were clear to him. Did other midshipmen master as much in so short a time? Was it not an advantage to serve under a man who could inspire such a desire to learn, even though the craving for knowledge was aroused by a determination to be free from his sarcastic taunts?
Standing thus deep in thought, the stillness in the turret was broken by a sound from below. It was faint but distinct. He listened with held breath. It seemed to be caused by a file against a metal surface. He could see nothing. The heavy iron shutters, built to protect the crew of the handling room from accidents in the turret, were shut tightly.
The sound continued, seemingly becoming louder. Then it ceased and a metal object rattled on the deck below. It was so clear and distinct that he thought it must be caused by Boyd in the handling room. Doubtlessly he was already there awaiting him.
“Boyd,” he raised his voice in order to be heard beyond the shutters.
No answer.
He called again louder. The sound of footsteps came to his ears from the handling room. What could it mean? By Lazar’s orders no work was to be done in the turret or handling room by any one save Boyd, and he had just gone up the hatch, and if he were below he would have answered his call.
Phil swung himself down the ladder, through the scuttle in the turret platform, then down a second ladder, and found himself in darkness on the floor of the handling room.
All was silence.
Presently he heard his name called from above in the voice of Boyd. What could it mean? Some one had been there but a second ago and what had he been doing?
“Turn the light on down here,” he called back. His heart beat wildly.
The electric lights flashed as the switch was turned from above.
The handling room was empty.
A glint from a small bright object caught his eye in the shadow of an ammunition car. He stooped down and picked up a gold locket. Could it be a clew to the mystery? The thing was harmless enough in itself.
O’Neil and Boyd quickly joined him.
“Have you been doing any repair work here?” he asked the gunner’s mate.
“No, sir, everything is right here, barring that shell car you were figuring on,” answered he promptly.
Phil held the locket in his open palm.
“Ask the men of the division if any of them lost a locket,” he spoke carelessly. “If one claims it send him to me,” he added, dropping the trinket in his pocket.
His experiments successfully over, he carefully surveyed the different familiar objects about him. All seemed normal.
“The noises must have come from the shaft alleys or engine room,” he said softly to himself.
“Did you speak, sir?” inquired O’Neil, hearing his low voice.
Phil glanced up with the intention of confiding in his petty officer, then changed his mind.
“No, I was only thinking,” he replied.
Arriving in his room he tried to dismiss the incident from his mind. He still held the locket in his hand.
“One of the men dropped it during drill,” he assured himself. But instinctively his eyes traveled back to the locket as if it were a talisman. A feeling took possession of him that if he opened the locket the clew would be inside. But he controlled this feeling. It would not be honorable to open it.
He regretted that Lazar was away—on board the “Minnesota,” umpiring her target practice. If he were here he would tell him of his fears; then he could do as he thought best.
“I believe Syd is right,” he said half aloud; “this close application to work has gotten on my nerves. I take things too seriously. I hear a noise in the turret, and the ship being a regular sounding-board, it may have come from anywhere. Then why should I take for granted it came from the handling room? And then I find a small gold locket which I at once take as a sure sign that I am right in my conjecture.” Then his thoughts became more serious. “But if it was in the handling room, it shows that some one was there who had no business there, because when I called he did not answer. Could any one wish to injure the turret gear? Had Lazar an enemy?”
For hours that night he lay awake revolving in his mind all the possible phases of the incident and at last dropped into a troubled sleep.
Awakening the next morning he was in a state of mental depression. An overpowering desire to open the locket came to him which he could not refuse. He took it out of his bureau drawer and forced the tiny thing open. A girl’s face looked out at him. He studied it carefully, then closed the locket and threw it back into the drawer with a gesture of disappointment.
“I wonder what I expected to find there,” he said with a sarcastic smile. “My nerves are in about the same condition as those of a man before his first battle. I shall certainly be happy when it’s over.”
“Mr. Lazar is in the turret, sir,” announced O’Neil, putting his head in the midshipman’s mess room, while Phil was eating his breakfast, “and he’d like to see you.”
“We are to fire as soon as the umpires arrive, Mr. Perry,” Lazar informed him as the midshipman crawled down through the scuttle and stood by his side between the two big guns.
Phil wavered in his inclination to inform his division officer of the incident of the day before.
“The umpires are here, sir, and the captain says you will fire first. Let him know when you are ready to go on the range,” reported the orderly, from the turret top.
Phil found himself at his station in the handling room. The mystery was still a secret.
All thoughts of the affair were quickly forgotten. His mind was now on the work of supplying ammunition from the magazines and shell rooms as fast as the two metal tubes above could hurl it at the target.
The shell rooms were opened and the big shells were brought out on the overhead tracks ready to be placed on the ammunition cars, then to be hoisted to the turret fifty feet above. The magazine doors were closed, but the hinged metal flaps were undogged and men stood ready to enter the powder magazines and pass the charges of powder through these fire-proof flaps to those in the handling room, then to be placed with the shell on the car.
Standing surrounded by his twenty-four men, Phil waited the order from Lazar to load the cars.
“Mr. Perry,” Lazar’s voice came down the flexible speaking-tube.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Phil answered back.
“Are you ready?”
“All ready, sir,” shouted Phil.
“Load!”
The cars were loaded and raised, and a second shell for each was brought out, ready to be put on the cars as soon as they came back.
“They are off,” Phil shouted excitedly, as both cars were hoisted with terrific speed up the curved steel rails; the shutters between the turret and handling room opened obediently to allow the cars to pass; a glimpse of half-naked men above them came into view, then they fell shut with a bang, shutting out the scene.
A dull crash from above told those in the handling room that the first gun had been fired.
An empty ammunition car came down through the shutter, was quickly supplied with its shell and powder and again disappeared upward through the magic shutter.
The firing above was rapid. The empty cars appeared so frequently that the men below were hard pressed to prevent the crews above from waiting for their ammunition.
“That’s the fastest firing I have ever seen,” cried one of the men in admiration, as he hurled a fifty pound powder bag accurately on to its shelf in the car; “they ain’t nothing in the fleet can touch this.”
“Hold on there!”
Phil saw with consternation the car start up prematurely with but one bag of powder, where four were necessary for a charge. It would have to go clear to the turret and then come down again for the other three bags, a loss of much precious time.
As if he thought he might call the impatient car back, he watched it gather speed to open the shutter. He saw it disappear and the shutter close behind it with a rasping noise. Then came a crash as of a heavy falling body, from above. The din of tearing metal filled his ears.
“Stand clear, men,” he had barely time to shout, when the loaded car, shutter and all, shot down into their midst, a hopeless mass of twisted metal.