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Page 48
"Well, I guess you don't want to hear all this junk," said Porky.
"We want every bit of it," said Captain Greene.
"Tell them about the fight they had," said Beany, shifting his
bandaged hand.
"We saw one thing right off," said Porky. "The Captain was the
whole push, just as if he was king. He sat there with a big
revolver beside him on the table, and I can tell you he didn't
trust his own shadow. The way Beany, and I doped it out, he was
running in hard luck. He had been sent out to sink a certain
number of ships before he could report, and all he had torpedoed
was just the Firefly. Grub was getting low, two of his men were
dead, and another one was curled up on the locker sicker than a
pup. Once in awhile the Captain would look at him, and say to us
in English, 'About twenty-four hours more, eh? Then he goes
through the tube.'"
"He just didn't have any heart at all," shuddered Beany. "Of
course that was why they didn't kill us; they couldn't run the
boat and tend to the torpedoes and the periscope and the engines
all at once in a case of a fight, with three men short. And then
they had to fight."
"Tell us about that," said Colonel Bright.
"I don't know when it was," said Porky. "Night and day was all
alike down there, but there was one big yellow-haired fellow that
ran the engine. He had been ordered to show me about it; and,
say, I will say I can run a submarine now. It was what you call
intensive training. When I was slow, he gave me a clip on the
head. He could just do anything with machinery. But they certainly
have got that submarine engine perfected so it will do everything
but talk. Any child could run it as soon as he learned the
different levers. I don't believe we have anything like
it; but we can have now because there's the pattern outside
there. You didn't shell it, did you?"
"Certainly not," said Captain Greene. "It is in charge of a
picked crew of our men right outside."
"Well, don't let 'em take her down until I get a chance to show
them how she works. There is just one lever that controls the
diving gear, and that is hidden, so you can't find it if you
don't know about it. I came near turning the old thing over. I
got beaten up that trip."
"Get to the fight," said Beany.
"The engineer was nutty. He talked all the time and muttered to
himself, and it got on the Captain's nerves or what he had left
of them. He stared at the engineer half the time; and that made
Louie peevish, I suppose. He took it out on me more or less--kept
me sweating over that engine every minute he was awake. He
wanted a drink too. It was sort of raw the way that Captain
would sit there and guzzle and never give the others a bit of it.
Louie would watch and watch and swallow hard; and the Captain
would watch him back again and grin. They were just like a lot
of savage dogs."
"Well, they didn't have enough to eat, to begin with," said
Beany, "and then the air was so bad, and they were all cooped up
in that little space, and you couldn't hear any outside noises at
all. You don't know how funny that is.
"They took our watches, so we couldn't tell the time, and,
honest, I thought we must have been there a month. And they all
knew that something pretty fierce would happen to them it they
went back home without sinking the ships that had been required
of them. They have it all down to a system.
"Well, pretty soon Louie took to leaving me with the engine, and
he would walk back past the Captain. He saluted him every time,
and he watched that bottle just like a starved dog. And every
time the Captain would slowly take hold of the bottle and grin.
And then Louie would walk back again.
"Then once he went a little too close, and the Captain said
something in German, and stuck out his foot, and tripped Louie
up. He fell the length of the apartment; just plunged down
because he wasn't expecting it. Beany was trying to do something
for the sick man on the locker, and I was at the engine. We were
sort of out of the way; and it was a lucky thing, because Louie
went mad then and there, that's all there was to it. I never saw
anything so awful, and neither did Beany. He didn't look human.
He had the bluest eyes you ever saw when he was right, and they
turned red as blood. And his face got dead white, and he showed
all his teeth like a dog does. He had big yellow teeth with
longer ones, like a dog's fangs, at the corners. And say, he was
quicker than a cat! The Captain didn't have a chance to pull his
gun. Louie had him by the arms, and was trying to break him in
two backward. A couple of other men ran to help the Captain, and
that Louie just kicked out back, and doubled them both up, one
after the other, in a corner. Nobody else interfered. I suppose
Louie knew, if he knew anything, that he was a gone goose anyhow,
and he wanted to punish the Captain. They never said a word.
Louie had the Captain's right wrist in his left hand, so the
Captain couldn't shoot, and I saw he was trying to twist the
Captain's right arm so he could break it."
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