Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/39

 ing to Cochran's lecture on the mechanism of the bow gun delivered to "Spuds," Hanson, radio man, and Jaynes, chief machinist, and stopped in the lee of the deck-house where "Chatty" was leaning against the life-buoy that hung there and gazing thoughtfully across the sun-flecked water to the distant green expanse of Nantucket.

"Well, Troy," said the Ensign, "seen any periscopes yet?"

Sighting a periscope was an over-used joke in the patrol service those days, but it usually brought a smile, just as it did now.

"Not yet, sir. I'd like to."

The officer laughed. "By Jove, so would I! But I guess you and I'll have to cross the briny before we have any such luck as that. You came from the Newport Station, didn't you? What do they say there about getting across? The Reserves, I mean."

"A good many have gone, sir. There was a detail of seventy left the day I did. They were to go to Halifax and board a transport for the other side. Nothing was known beyond that, but the general idea was that they were to be sprinkled around the destroyers over there."

The officer sighed. "I've done my best to make it, but this is what I drew. Oh, well, some- 17