pensive. So Whistler and Ikey got up the sail, it
filled, and they cast off the moorings. The catboat began to edge her
way out into the cove. There was no rain falling; but fog wreaths rolled
in from the sea.

"Get your scare!" shouted Whistler as he ran back to take the tiller.
"Toot away once in a while. We don't want to stub our toe against some
other craft, and that before we get out of the cove."

"A submarine, for instance?" chuckled Frenchy, soon becoming pacified.
"Ikey's father thinks maybe he might bag one while we're out here."

"I'd like to get a close-up view of one of those submarine chasers,"
remarked Torry, finding the horn in the forward locker. He tooted it
raucously, and then continued: "They say some of 'em can go like the
wind."

"Go right through a tub like this, if once we got in the way," commented
Whistler. "Mind you! faster than the _Colodia_--and that's some speed."

"Wow!" cried Frenchy. "Don't believe anything on water ever does go
faster than a torpedo boat destroyer."

"Oh, yes, there are faster boats. How about a hydro?" Phil said, when
Ikey broke in with an inquiry:

"Say! lemme ask you: Why do they call the _Colodia_ and her sister ships
'torpedo boat destroyers'? We don't see many torpedo boats anyway. They
are all old stuff."

"That's right," Torry said. "What is the why-for? All naval craft are
supposed to be destroyers anyway--I mean service craft."

Morgan was the oracle on this occasion.

"Ikey is right. I've read that torpedo boats antedate the Spanish War.
Their exclusive business was to run up close to an enemy battleship and
deliver against it an automobile torpedo. These boats were great stuff
in the beginning.

"Then they invented a craft as an antidote for the torpedo boat--the
torpedo boat destroyer. Our Admiral Sims called this new vessel 'a tin
box built around a mighty big engine.'"

"Wow! And he is right," cried Frenchy Donahue. "That's just what our
_Colodia_ is."

"And these subchasers are still faster," Torry observed. "They tell me
they can make thirty-five, and better, an hour."

"Oi, oi!" cried Ikey Rosenmeyer at this juncture. "Speak of the Old
Harry and hear his wings, yet! What's that off yonder?"

The _Sue Bridger_ was now skimming out of the cove, and the fog was
lifting. They got a sight of a patch of open sea across which a low,
gray vessel was shooting like a shark after its prey.

"What a beaut!" shouted Torry.

"That's one of the