Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/102

 month without getting foot on shore and then waddle home again and go into dry dock for repairs. It's sure punk luck, getting stuck on this old spile-driver."

"You don't think, then, that they'll send the Gyandotte across to the other side?"

"Her? She couldn't do it, not unless they towed her," was the contemptuous reply. "If you wanted to get across you'd better have stuck to your patrol boat. They're sending those over all the time. Well, I've got to be stirring."

The youth sighed and moved off along the spotless deck, his wide trousers flapping around his long, thin shanks. Left to himself Nelson watched the far, thin, low-lying streak of sand that was Cape Hatteras and wondered if what the yeoman had told him as to the ship's destination was true. It was nearly a week since he had said good-by to the Wanderer and taken train for Norfolk. There he had reported at the Navy Yard, according to orders, and been assigned to the third class cruiser Gyandotte, at the time loading supplies and taking on the final coat of gray war paint. The Gyandotte, after the Wanderer, had seemed a truly majestic ship and that she was headed straight for France or England had seemed quite within the probabilities, until Nel- 80