CHAPTER XXI--THE MYSTERY MESSAGE

In a very few minutes the crew of the _Colodia_--all those above deck, at least--gained a view of the burning ship.

She was completely wrecked at the stern, and it was probably true, as Ensign MacMasters had said, that her engines and boilers had been blown up. She lay helpless and sinking.

All her passengers and her crew had been driven forward by the flames. The bow of the steamship was slanting up into the air at a threatening angle. The men were lowering such boats as there remained from the forward davits.

The _Susanne’s_ bulk, the smoke, and the last shreds of the fog hid the enemy from the view of the destroyer’s crew. But suddenly they saw a high-powered motor-boat appear beside the crippled steamship. Armed men filled it. Two stood up as the boat swung in to the steamship’s side and caught the hanging davit ropes. They hooked these ropes to the launch, fore and aft.

As quickly as one can tell it, the Germans “tailed on” to the ropes and hauled their own boat into the air. In a minute she overhung the rail of the sugar ship and the Germans swarmed out upon her deck.

The forward guns of the _Colodia_ might have thrown shells into this launch, but such missiles would have imperiled the lives of the people on the _Susanne_.

The _Colodia’s_ officers through their glasses could see the remaining passengers and crew of the sugar ship lined up against the rail under the threatening rifles of the Germans. There was considerable activity on the deck of the sinking ship during the next few minutes.

The destroyer swerved in her course, her commander hoping to get around the _Susanne_ and mark the position of the raider before the motor launch could get away from the sinking ship. But the Germans worked so quickly that this chance was very small indeed. The destroyer was still a long shot away from the exciting scene.

A number of men were seen staggering along the deck of the sugar ship bearing some heavy object. It was hoisted into the launch and then the latter was lowered quickly into the sea, most of the Germans scrambling down as best they might.

“It’s the purser’s strong box!” shouted one of the lookouts in the destroyer’s top. “And they are going to shoot the poor guy, I bet, for not giving up the combination!”

Other members of the _Colodia’s_ company had already observed a man’s figure, with his hands tied behind him, standing at the farther rail of the _Susanne_. The four last men from the raider’s launch, all ready to descend into the boat, raised their rifles and fired across the deck at the victim. The man fell, and the murderers swarmed down the rope into the launch.

All this the excited crew of the destroyer saw while they were yet too far away to be of any help. Commander Lang might have ordered his guns to open fire; but the danger of hitting the _Susanne_ was too great.

The officer commanding the German launch was too sharp to give the coming destroyer any safe chance of making a hit without damaging the sugar ship. He steered his motor-boat right along the hull of the crippled _Susanne_, under the shower of flaming débris that had begun to fall, and went out of sight in a cloud of smoke that had settled upon the sea.

This smoke offered a splendid bit of camouflage for the raider and the launch. Up to this point the lookouts in the destroyer’s tops had caught no glimpse of the _Sea Pigeon_. She was a very wary bird indeed!

The smoke cloud from the burning ship spread across the sea and supplemented the fast dissolving fog in hiding the German craft. But suddenly a lookout hailed the _Colodia’s_ quarter:

“Steamship’s top, sir! Six hundred yards abaft the sinking ship, sir!”

Orders snapped to the forward gun crews. They could see nothing but fog and smoke astern of the _Susanne_; but their knowledge of elevation, distance, and other gunnery lore, encouraged them to hope for a “strike.”

The guns began to speak, and the shells shrieked over the stern of the sinking steamship, exploding somewhere in the smoke cloud. There followed no shots in reply. The Germans were shy. The thickening smoke shut out again all sight of the _Sea Pigeon_.

The condition of the _Susanne_ was threatening. Commander Lang dared not consider a pursuit of the German raider when lives were in such peril here.

Two boats were all that had been put out from the sugar ship. Her other small craft were smashed by the shellfire of the raider.

Some forty or more people were gathered in the bows of the _Susanne_, and they must needs be taken off quickly. The big merchant vessel was surely going down.

Her two boats had already pulled away to a safe distance. Commander Lang would not risk his own small craft near the trembling hull of the _Susanne_, but swerved the course of the destroyer that she might run in under the high bows of the ill-fated ship.

Signals were passed, and the remaining members of the _Susanne’s_ crew hastened to prepare slings in which to lower the passengers to the destroyer’s deck.

“Volunteers to go up there and help those people! Smart, now!” sang out the executive officer of the _Colodia_ through his trumpet.

Ikey Rosenmeyer and Frenchy Donahue, who were both free, leaped forward at the call. With Seven Knott and two other sailors, they swarmed up to the high bows of the imperiled ship.

The two Seacove boys were well trained in the uses of cordage and in knotting and splicing. They seized a coil of rope and, working together swiftly, safely lowered three women and a wounded man over the rail to the destroyer’s deck before they were piped down from the _Susanne_.

Even the dead body of the murdered purser was sent aboard the _Colodia_. The flames were by that time surging upward, and it was almost too hot to stand upon her forward decks. The bows of the ship were being thrust up as her stern sank. At any minute the wreck might plunge beneath the sea.

“Back all!” rose a stentorian voice from the destroyer.

Ikey and Frenchy went over the rail and swarmed down their respective lines. They were guided inboard to the firm deck of the destroyer. The other workers followed. The _Colodia_ backed swiftly away.

Nor was this done a minute too soon. The wreck was already wallowing from side to side like some wounded monster of the sea. The air pressure blew up the forward deck. Had the survivors remained longer they would have been overwhelmed!

A roaring like that of a great exhaust pipe came from the interior of the sugar ship. The sea began to seethe in a whirlpool about her. She stood almost upright on her stern as she sank.

Down, down she went, while the destroyer turned tail and scudded away at top speed. To be caught in that whirlpool would have spelled disaster for even as staunch a craft as the _Colodia_ undoubtedly was.

The _Susanne_ disappeared slowly, with great combers roaring about her. Beaten to a froth, the waves leaped, white-maned, upon her tossing sprit, and finally hid even that from sight. The sea was a cauldron of boiling waters, and that for hundreds of yards around.

The two boats that had escaped from the wreck had been pulled far away. They were loaded heavily, but were not at the time in any danger. The _Colodia_, therefore, did not swing her nose in their direction.

Instead, she was speeded into the rapidly thinning smoke cloud which covered the sea astern of the sugar ship. There the German raider was somewhere hiding. It was possible that one of the shells from the destroyer might have done her some damage, or might even have struck the motor launch.

These hopes were doomed to disappointment, however. Five minutes after the _Susanne_ was utterly sunk, the smoke was so dissipated that the lookouts on the destroyer could view the ocean for miles about.

In the distance, and reeling off the knots at most surprising speed, was a steam vessel that could be naught else than the _Sea Pigeon_. She had picked up her motor launch and escaped. The _Colodia_ might have followed and overhauled her in a long chase; but she could not desert the two boatloads of survivors from the sugar ship here in the middle of the Atlantic.

The radio man was sending queries for help for the survivors of the _Susanne_; but no ship answered nearer than two hundred miles. It was the first duty of the naval vessel to save the helpless, and she could not fight the German pirates and make these people comfortable, too.

So pursuit was abandoned, much to the dissatisfaction of her crew, and the _Colodia_ swung around and approached the two open boats. These, with their cargoes of human freight, were picked up. Then the destroyer was headed into the north, there to meet a Mediterranean-bound steamship that would take off the _Susanne’s_ castaways and leave the naval vessel free again.

Of course the Navy Boys were vastly interested in the experiences of the people from the sunken ship. Few of her crew, and no passengers, had been lost. When the boilers had blown up two of the firemen were killed and several wounded.

The courageous purser who had refused to tell the Germans the combination of the safe in his office, was the only officer killed. In that safe had been the wealth of several passengers. The raider wanted gold more than anything else.

“Just like the pirates of old, I tell you,” Frenchy said to his chums. “Those old fellows used to make their captives walk the plank. Now these Huns line ’em up and shoot them. I only hope we catch and sink that _Sea Pigeon_, and every German aboard of her!”

“Look out he doesn’t bite you, fellows,” advised Al. “He’s got hydrophobia.”

But they all felt increased anger at the enemy when they had talked with the survivors of the _Susanne_. Their experience was enough to stir the blood of any listener.

“That _Sea Pigeon_ has got to be caught!” was the assurance of the boys and men of the _Colodia’s_ crew.

The cruise, after this experience, was a much more serious matter to them all than it had been before. As far as the Seacove boys and Belding went, it had become pretty serious in any case. The prime reason for this lay in the message of mystery that the radio men continued, at times, to half catch out of the air.

George Belding confided to Sparks the name Phil Morgan had made out of the uncertain letters which the chief had written down after hearing them repeated in his ear while at the radio instrument. “Redbird”; that seemed plain enough.

“And the _Redbird_ is the ship my folks and Whistler’s sisters are sailing on to Bahia,” explained Belding. “Why, she might be right out yonder, not so many miles away,” and he pointed into the west.

“You mean to say your sister can send Morse?”

“She used to be able to. She wasn’t quick or accurate, but she could get a message over.”

“There is something altogether wrong with this sending,” said the radio man thoughtfully.

“I know it, sir. She wouldn’t know any code. She would probably spell out every letter and word. We only get a part of what is sent. That is, if it is Lilian who is doing this.”

“It is mighty interesting, this ‘ghost talk’,” the chief said slowly. “I can see you are putting altogether too much faith in the possibility that the stuff is real. Why, we often get the most inexplicable sounds out of the air! It is a very long chance that this is a real message, or that it is from your sister, George.”

“It’s a message from somebody and from somewhere; and I’m awfully interested, too,” declared Belding. “I wish you’d let me listen in again.”

“Oh, I’ll do that little thing for you,” agreed Sparks. “If there is nothing much doing in radio in the afternoon watch, come around again.”

With this promise George Belding contented himself. He told Whistler and the other boys he was going to set down every letter of the mystery message that he could comprehend, and see afterward just what could be made out of them--sense or nonsense!