"How does he explain Jonah being swallowed by the whale?" whispered Frenchy.
"He doesn't have to explain it," retorted Torry. "If you don't believe a whale can swallow a man, jump down the throat of the next one you see."
As a whole, the crew of the _Kennebunk_ were not inclined to consider the incident of the infernal machine carelessly. A serious impression was made upon them all.
But the mysterious prospect of what was ahead of them shortly smothered the matter of the peril escaped. There might be greater perils ahead.
The superdreadnaught halted but for an hour at a port of the Azores. This was to send mail ashore. Then she picked up speed again and traveled north.
She passed convoys of merchant vessels guarded by French, British and American destroyers. The _Kennebunk_ exchanged signals with several cruisers of the United States Navy as well.
Drill at the guns went on daily. Once they spied and shelled a German submarine, but she escaped. This incident greatly enraged the crew of the gun that missed her. It was not the gun to the crew of which Whistler and Torry belonged.
"Can't expect to get the Hun every time," was the soothing remark of one of the division captains.
"Why not?" asked somebody else. "That's what we are here for, isn't it? I don't believe Uncle Sam wants excuses."
The standard the men set themselves in our Navy is higher than their officers require.
The boys from Seacove, as well as Hans Hertig and Mr. MacMasters, kept a sharp lookout for their beloved _Colodia_. But they were fated not to meet the destroyer until the great event which had brought the superdreadnaught into European waters.
The _Kennebunk_ steamed into a certain roadstead one evening where lay more huge battleships, cruisers and smaller armored vessels than Whistler and his mates had ever seen before. They flew the flags of three nations, and they were prepared to move _en masse_ upon the enemy at the briefest notice.
The methods of strategy by which the German Navy, or a large part of it, was tolled out of its impregnable hiding place the Navy boys did not learn till long afterwards. But Phil, at least, half realized that the German High Command believed that the way to shelling the British coast by her great naval guns was at last opened.