# The Island of Appledore/Chapter 5
### CHAPTER V THE WAR GAME

To Billy it seemed as though he fell asleep very quietly and comfortably, as he clung to the cat-boat with the water breaking over him, and that he awoke, aching and miserable, to the wish that he had been left where he was. As more of his wits returned to him, however, he realized that it was a little pleasanter to be warm and dry and lying in a berth in a brightly-lighted room than left to drown in the disagreeably cold Atlantic.
Some one was lifting him up to pour a hot stinging drink down his throat; he gulped and choked and did not enjoy it. He tried to look around to see who was treating him with such unkindness but found it too great an effort. Some one else was leaning over him. He realized after listening to the talk for a moment that this was the ship’s captain. He remembered quickly Captain Saulsby’s last ​junction and, with a great exertion managed to speak.
“That land on Appledore Island,” he began unsteadily. “Captain Saulsby’s land—some one wants to buy it—some one who isn’t square—you must see about it.”
He did not seem to be making himself very clear, and stopped to rest.
“What’s the boy talking about?” the Captain said, clearly puzzled. “Is he out of his head?”
“He sounds so but perhaps he isn’t,” the other answered; “he seems to be trying very hard to tell you something. Here, take this.”
Billy swallowed a second dose of the detestable drink and under its reviving influence made another attempt. This time he succeeded better and seemed almost to make the Captain understand what he was trying to explain. The endeavour wearied him greatly, however, and he lay back in his berth feeling quite worn out and very drowsy.
“We’ll let him sleep a while now,” the officer said; “that, I think, is really all he needs. He’s a husky youngster and won’t suffer much from his ducking. I’m not so certain about the old fellow who was with him.”
​Billy was asleep almost before they had reached the door. When he awoke again he certainly felt much better, though stiff and sore and uncomfortable still. A smiling colored boy in a white jacket was sitting by his berth, put there for the special purpose, it seemed, of catching him when he rolled over the edge, which he did immediately.
The wind had risen and the torpedo-boat that had picked them up was pitching and tossing as only a torpedo-boat knows the art. Everything in the room danced and rattled and Billy was obliged to brace himself with both arms to keep from being thrown out of his berth again and again. He asked between pitches for Captain Saulsby and was assured that all was well with the old sailor and that he was “coming around fine.”
Vigorous health is a strong resister even of the after effects of trying to drown, so it was not long before Billy was able to sit up, then to step gingerly down from his rocking berth and try a few unsteady steps across the floor. After that the room became rapidly too small to hold him and he was seized with a devouring curiosity to inspect the ship. He was taken first to see Captain Saulsby, who had ​been conscious and quite cheery, they told him, and had now dropped off into a comfortable sleep. A friendly blue-jacket who had also come to ask after the captain’s welfare, took Billy under his care, and offered to conduct him up on deck. Once there, however, the sailor was called away by a sudden order, leaving his charge clinging to the rail and wondering just where they were going and what they were doing. Clouds of salt spray swept the length of the ship, making him duck and gasp and grin, but he would not have gone below again for anything on earth.
The night was pitch black now and stormy, with gusts of wind and rain, the ship seemed to be taking an aimless course, running generally southward from Appledore Island but moving now here, now there, sometimes at half speed, sometimes as swiftly as her big engines could drive her. Presently his new friend was able to return to his side and to explain a little more of what they were about.
“We’re playing the war game,” he said, “and our orders just now are to look for submarines. The only sign of one we have found so far was your little craft, and a pretty model of a submarine she was trying to make of ​herself. There’s one of the big battleships has got away from the rest of the fleet, and we have orders to look for her, too; but there’s not much likelihood of her being in these parts. We’ll sink her if we can get the chance though; I wish we could.”
“But—but—you don’t really oink her?” Billy asked, not willing to show his ignorance, but far too curious to keep quiet.
“Oh, no; we get up as close as we dare and send up a signal to show that we could sink her and that it is to be counted on the record for us. But if she finds us with her searchlights before we can fire, and if we’re close enough to be smashed by her guns, then we are destroyed and a mad lot we are, I can tell you.”
It might have sounded like a foolish pastime to Billy when he was ashore, but here in the wind and the dark, with the ship rushing forward at full speed and with every one aboard her straining to do his part to the uttermost, the war game seemed most thrillingly in earnest. He too hung over the rail and watched the long beam of light swing in searching circles, he peered through the dark for the periscope of a submarine until his eyes ​ached and was as disappointed as anybody when no such discovery was made. Time passed and nothing was to be seen but a waste of angry, tossing water; so the lights were finally covered and the destroyer turned to pursue a steady course northward.
Billy never quite knew by just what process he came finally to be on the bridge. He was aware that it was absolutely against all rules for him to go there, but such a force of curiosity drew him thither that it did not seem possible to resist. By slipping silently from one inconspicuous place to another, by lounging carelessly against the rail whenever an officer chanced to pass and by speeding across the deck the moment his back was turned, he finally came closer and closer to the desired spot, ventured a cautious foot upon, one of the steps and then another, and all at once was safely curled up in a corner of dense shadow within the sacred limits of the forbidden place.
The Captain was walking slowly up and down, talking to one of the officers, passing every now and then so close that he almost brushed Billy’s elbow. In the gleam of one of the hooded lights, he could sometimes catch the glistening of the water on their wet ​coats, or the shine of the younger officer’s bright red hair.
“That’s a queer pair we picked up,” the Captain was saying as they passed. “I went down to see how they were getting on and found the boy all worked up about some scheme that he claims is being hatched on Appledore Island. He says that the old sailor wants it reported, and may be too far gone to do it himself, but he isn’t very clear as to just what the trouble is. The best I can make out seems to be that there is an effort being made to buy this man Saulsby’s land, and that he is sure there is German influence backing it, with a view to getting ready a possible base of supplies in case of war.”
“One hears of such things having gone on for years abroad, before the German trouble cut loose,” said the other, “but the boy may not have known what he was talking about. He had been hanging to that boat four or five hours and that doesn’t tend to clear the brain.”
“Well,” said the Captain, “I’m not very sure myself, but I may plan to look into the matter without telling him so. The harbour he speaks of is at the northwest end—”
They moved out of hearing, and Billy took ​the opportunity to stretch his cramped knees and shift his uneasy position before they should come back again. He was heartily ashamed of being there, eavesdropping but—well, one does not get into the war game often. When he was passed again, he realized from the voices that the Captain had gone below and that two of the younger officers were talking.
“I wish we could have found some of those submarines,” one was saying, “especially with the manœvres so nearly over. Our orders to end by fetching a compass round the whole fleet make it almost certain that we will be caught ourselves, so it does seem as though we might have got something.”
“Yes,” said the other. “I believe if I could only fire off that torpedo rocket to tell one of those uppety submarine commanders he is sunk, I would be the happiest man in Uncle Sam’s Navy. There’s no hope now of our finding that battleship either.”
The destroyer sped on through the rain and the dark, the two officers stood silently at their posts and Billy curled up closer in his corner, soaked and cramped and aching and happy. He thought a moment of that boy who had ​walked up the path between Captain Saulsby’s bent, old willow trees, a sullen boy who had sniffed the salt breeze disdainfully and vowed that he did not like it. That was some entirely different person whose name might have happened to be Billy Wentworth, but who had nothing whatever in common with the boy he was now. He closed his eyes as he was thinking it over, and even might have dozed a little until a sudden exclamation from the nearest officer startled him into alert attention. The rapid volley of excited orders that followed told him at once that something unusual must have occurred, and, forgetting all caution in his eager interest, he stood upright that he might watch the better. It seemed as though he saw a looming bulk in the blackness ahead of them, as though he actually heard a voice speaking somewhere beyond there in the dark. Then, all in a breath, a myriad of electric lights went on and there sprang into form the outline of a huge battleship, right across their bows. She seemed to tower above them like a mountain, enormous, massive, moving at no very great speed, but inexorably as though there were no hope of her swerving or checking her course.
​The little destroyer ducked and plunged as she came hard over, she caught the big bow wave and floundered for a second but nevertheless pressed manfully on. They were cutting under the big dreadnaught’s bows, they were bound to be rammed amidships at least; no, it would be nearer the stern. Oh, wonder of wonders, they were going to win clear. It seemed to Billy, as he clung to the rail, that he could almost have stretched out his hand and touched the vessel’s vast steel side as they went by. He heard some one near him laugh out loud in pure, joyful excitement and he saw that it was the commander of the destroyer, himself, who seized the pistol and fired the signal rocket. Up it went in a flaming stream, directly over the dreadnaught’s bridge, described a crimson arch above the heads of the startled officers and dropped on the other side. On both vessels there could be no shadow of a doubt that a desperate night attack had been successfully made and that according to all the rules of the war game the battleship New Mexico had gone to the bottom with all on board.
For Billy, who was as full of thrills as any of the rest, who hung forward to watch with ​all his eyes lest he should miss something, there was a separate passage of the adventure that was all his own. For as the ship’s searchlights slanted down upon them a moment too late, cutting a wide, white circle upon the water, they showed him a most unexpected sight. There, bobbing serenely on the waves, her sails drooping and a little bedraggled as though she were very tired, but her gay red pennant fluttering bravely still, rode the little craft that had been the cause of all his adventures. There could surely be no doubt that it was the Josephine . A moment she sailed serenely alongside, then the roar of foaming water from under the destroyer’s bow reached out and caught her. She staggered, careened, rose boldly on the summit of a wave, then sank. She had sailed far and carried calamity in her wake, but she made a brave end and went down with colours flying.
His excitement in watching the Josephine was most rudely interrupted by the discovery by the young officer that there was some one on the bridge who had no business to be there. Just what was said to him, Billy preferred afterwards not to remember. He was bundled down the steps with far more haste than ​ceremony, and presently found himself, much chastened and subdued, back in charge of his friend, the bluejacket. Even then he refused to be taken below, for the destroyer was now coming into the zone where she must make the perilous passage through the whole fleet, and he was bound that he would not lose one breathless instant.
The wind had dropped a little and the sea was growing quieter. The torpedo-boat checked her speed and moved forward more slowly and almost without a sound. There was nothing, Billy thought, but a waste of empty water and starless sky, but wait, what was that darker shape showing vaguely through the gloom? Presently he was aware that it was a ship, and another one beyond, and another and another, vessels on every hand lying in wait, hostile and threatening. The destroyer crept onward, feeling her way, altering her course every now and again to avoid some man-of-war swinging at anchor ahead of her. Far off on the horizon there shone out a twinkle of lights and the beam of a searchlight was lifted to the sky.
“The rest of the torpedo-boat flotilla is coming in, too,” said the sailor at his side, ​chuckling gleefully. “That fellow over there has been caught slipping by, but it wasn’t us.”
Suddenly their vessel gathered speed and shot away with her engines crowded to every pound of steam. She had passed the danger lines and had only to put a safe distance between herself and the battleship fleet. The watchers on the nearest vessel must have heard the hum of her machinery or the rush of water from her bow, for immediately lights flared up, seeming to spread from ship to ship, straight gleaming, groping fingers flashed back and forth, signalling, hunting and questioning. Billy, looking back, seemed to see the whole sky an interwoven maze of shafts of light as every warship searched for her enemy. One long beam swung toward them in a wide, sweeping curve, approached, almost touched them, but just missed, leaving them safe to speed away into the safety of the darkness.
“It’s twelve o’clock, and the war game’s over,” said the sailor at his side, “and I believe our old boat has made a pretty good record after all. Now you’re to come below and turn in, young man, or you’ll surely be a dead boy in the morning.”
The novelty of sleeping in a sailor’s ​hammock was quite lost on Billy, for he was deep in slumber almost before he could clamber in. He was nevertheless uneasily conscious, even through the heaviest of his repose, of the swinging and bumping that attended his slumbers. He thought he must be still dreaming when some one shook him by the arm.
“It’s a shame to waken such a sleepy boy,” said his friend, the blue-jacket, “but there’s something here you don’t want to miss seeing.”
Billy would have been willing to miss anything, he thought, until he had stumbled out of his hammock, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked where his companion pointed.
It was morning, cold, cloudy, windless morning, but still with light enough to see. One by one the ships were leaving their anchorage and moving away in long procession, huge dreadnaughts, swift cruisers, torpedo boats and submarines. In endless line they seemed to pass, stately and grey and silent in the dawn. Billy, his teeth chattering with chill and excitement, his bones still aching from the misadventures of the past hours, clung to his friend’s arm and looked and looked as though he could not see enough.
Never before had he had an idea of what ​the Navy really was. He had seen photographs upon a printed page, or pictures on the movie screen, but had never even guessed from them how a man-of-war would impress him in reality. For the big grey battleships suddenly seemed to stand for many things, for the greatness of the country they guarded, for the power of the engines that drove them, the faithfulness and loyalty of the service that guided them and lastly—here an extra quiver ran through his shivering body—for the might of the enemy they would some day go forth to meet.