Day broke with rather more than half a gale blowing beneath a louring sky.
Once clear of the bottleneck mouth of the harbour, the _Assyrian_ ran into
brutal quartering seas. An old hand at such work, for upward of a decade
a steady-paced Dobbin of the transatlantic lanes, she buckled down to it
doggedly and, remembering her duty by her passengers, rolled no more than
she had to, buried her nose in the foaming green only when she must. For
all her care, the main deck forward was alternately raked by stinging
volleys of spray and scoured by frantic cascades. More than once the crew
of the bow gun narrowly escaped being carried overboard to a man. Blue with
cold, soaked to the buff despite oilskins, they stuck stubbornly to their
posts. Perched beyond reach of shattering wavecrests, the passengers on the
boat-deck huddled unhappily in the lee of the superstructure--and snarled
in response to the cheering information that better conditions for baffling
the ubiquitous U-boat could hardly have been brewed by an indulgent
Providence. Sheeting spindrift contributed to lower visibility: two
destroyers standing on parallel courses about a mile distant to port and
to starboard were more often than not barely discernible, spectral vessels
reeling and dipping in the haze. The ceaseless whistle of wind in the
rigging was punctuated by long-drawn howls which must have filled any
conscientious banshee with corrosive envy.
Toward mid-morning rain fell in torrents, driving even the most fearful
passengers to shelter within the superstructure. A majority crowded the
landing at the head of the main companionway close by the leeward door.
Bolder spirits marched off to the smoking room--Crane starting this
movement with the declaration that, for his part, he would as lief drown
like a rat in a trap as battling to keep up in the frigid inferno of those
raging seas. A handful of miserables, too seasick to care whether the ship
swam or sank, mutinously took to their berths.
Stateroom 27--adjoining Lanyard's--sported obstinately a shut door.
Lanyard, sedulous not to discover his interest by questioning the stewards,
caught never a glimpse of its occupant. For his own satisfaction he took a
covert census of passengers on deck as the vessel entered the danger zone,
and made the tally seventy-one all told--the number on the passenger list
when the _Assyrian_ had left her landing stage the previous evening.
It seemed probable, therefore, that the person in 27 had come aboard from
the tender, either with or following the official party. Lanyard was
unable to say that more had not left the tender than appeared to sit in
inquisition in the music room.
By noon the wind was beginning to moderate, and the sea was being beaten
down by that relentlessly lashing rain. Visibility, however, was more low
than ever. A fairly representative number descended to the dining saloon
for luncheon--a meal which none finished. Midway in its course a thunderous
explosion to starboard drove all in panic once more to the decks.
Within two hundred yards of the _Assyrian_ a floating mine had destroyed a
patrol boat. No more was left of it than an oil-filmed welter of splintered
wreckage: of its crew, never a trace.
Imperturbably the _Assyrian_ proceeded. Not so her passengers: now the
smoking room was deserted even by the insouciant Crane, and the seasick to
a woman brought their troubles back to the boat-deck.
Alone the tenant of 27 stopped below. And the riddle of this ostensible
indifference to terrors that clawed at the vitals of every other soul on
board grew to intrigue Lanyard to the point of obsession. Was the reason
brute apathy or sheer foolhardihood? He refused either explanation,
feeling sure some darker and more momentous motive dictated this obstinate
avoidance of the public eye. Exasperation aroused by failure to fathom the
mystery took precedence in his thoughts even to the personal solicitude
excited by last night's gossip of the smoking room....
With no other disturbing incident the afternoon wore away, the wind
steadily flagging, the waves as steadily subsiding. When twilight closed in
there was nothing more disturbing to one's equilibrium than a sea of long
and sullen rolls scored by the pelting downpour.
Perhaps as many as ten venturesome souls dined in the saloon, their fellows
sticking desperately to the decks and contenting themselves with coffee and
sandwiches.
Daylight waned, terrors waxed: passengers instinctively gravitated into
little knots and clusters, conversing guardedly as if fearful lest their
normal accents bring down upon them those Apaches of the underseas for
signs of whom their frightened glances incessantly ranged over-rail and
searched the heaving wastes.
The understanding was tacit that all would spend the night on deck.
Dusk at length blotted out the shadows of their guardian destroyers, and a
great and desolating loneliness settled down upon the ship. One by one
the passengers grew dumb; still they clung together, but seemingly their
tongues would no more function.
With nightfall, the rain ceased, the breeze freshened a trifle, the pall of
cloud lifted and broke, giving glimpses of remote, impersonal stars. Later
a gibbous moon leered through the flying wrack, checkering the sea with
a restless pattern of black and silver. In this ghastly setting the
_Assyrian_, showing no lights, a shape of flying darkness pursuing a course
secret to all save her navigators, strained ever onward, panting, groaning,
quivering from stem to stern ... like an enchanted thing doomed to
perpetual labours, striving vainly to break bonds invisible that transfixed
her to one spot forever-more, in the midst of that bleak purgatory of
shadow and moonshine and dread....
Sensitive to the eerie influence of the hour, Lanyard interrupted the tour
of the decks which he had steadily pursued for the better part of the
evening, and rested at the forward rail, looking down over the main deck,
its bleached planking dotted with dark shapes of fixed machinery. In the
bows the formless, uncouth bulk of the gun squatted in its tarpaulin. Its
crew tramped heavily to and fro, shivering in heavy jackets, hands in
pockets, shoulders hunched up to ears. Farther aft an iron door clanged
heavily behind a sailor emerging from an alleyway; he approached the ship's
bell, with practised hand sounded two double strokes, then turned and sang
out in the weird minor traditional in his calling:
"_Four bells--and a-a-all's well_!"
Even as the wind made free with the melancholy echoes of that assurance,
the spell upon the ship was exorcised.
Overhead, from the foremast crow's-nest, a voice screamed, hoarsely urgent:
"_Torpedo! 'Ware submarine to port_!"
Many things happened simultaneously, or in a span of seconds strangely
scant. The gunners sprang to station, whipping away the tarpaulin, while
their lieutenant focussed binoculars upon the confused distances of the
night. Obedient to his instructions, the long, gleaming tube of steel
pivoted smoothly to port.
From the bridge a signal rocket soared, hissing. The whistle loosed
stentorian squalls of indignation and distress--one long and four short.
Commands were shouted; the engine-room telegraph wrangled madly. The
momentum of the _Assyrian_ was checked startlingly; her bows sheered
smartly off to port.
A rumour of frightened voices and pounding feet came from the leeward
boat-deck, where the main body of the passengers was congregated, hidden
from Lanyard by the shoulder of the foreward deck-house. A number of men
ran forward, paused by the rail, stared, and scurried back, yelling in
alarm. At this the din swelled to uproar.
Scanning closely the surface of the sea, Lanyard himself descried a silvery
arrow of spray lancing the swells, making with deadly speed toward the port
bow of the _Assyrian_. But now both screws were churning full speed astern;
the vessel lost headway altogether. Then her engines stopped. For a
breathless instant she rested inert, like something paralyzed with fright,
bows-on to the torpedo, the telegraph ringing frantically. Then the
starboard screw began to turn full ahead, the port remaining idle. The
bows swung off still more sharply to port. The torpedo shot in under them,
vanished for a breathless moment, reappeared a boat's-length to starboard,
plunged harmlessly on its unhindered way down the side of the vessel, and
disappeared astern.
Amidships terrified passengers milled like sheep, hampering the work of the
boat-crews at the davits. Ship's officers raged among them, endeavouring
to restore order. Half a mile or so dead ahead a tiny tongue of flame spat
viciously in the murk. A projectile shrieked overhead, and dropped into the
sea astern. Another followed and fell short.
The U-boat was shelling the _Assyrian_.
The forward gun barked violent expostulation, if without visible effect;
the submarine lobbing two more shells at the steamship with an indifference
to its own peril astonishing in one of its craven breed, trained to strike
and run before counterstroke may be delivered. Its extraordinary temerity,
indeed, argued ignorance of the convoying destroyers.
Coincident with the second shot, however, these unleashed searchlights
slashed the dark through and through with their great, white, fanlike
blades, till first one then the other picked up and steadied relentlessly
upon a toy-boat shape that swam the swells about midway between the
_Assyrian_ and the destroyer off the port bows.
Simultaneously the quickfirers of the latter went into action, jetting
orange flame. In the searchlights' glare, spurts of white water danced all
round the submarine. A mutter of gunfire rolled over to the _Assyrian_,
abruptly silenced by an imperative deep voice of heavier metal--which spoke
but once.
With the lurid unreality of clap-trap theatrical illusion the U-boat
vomited a great, spreading sheet of flame....
Someone at the rail, near Lanyard's shoulder, uttered a hushed cry of
horror.
He paid no heed, his interest wholly focussed upon that distant patch of
shining water. As his dazzled vision cleared he saw that the submarine had
disappeared.