Likewise in French, but in a woman's voice of uncommon quality, deep
and bell-sweet, came the protest from the passenger at his side: "But,
monsieur, what are we doing? We turn away from them--those poor things
drowning there!"
That was quite true: under forced draught the _Assyrian_ was heading away
on a new course.
"They drown out there in that black water--and we leave them to that!"
Lanyard turned. "The destroyers will take care of them," he said--"if any
survived that explosion with strength enough to swim."
He spoke from the surface of his thoughts and with a calm that veiled
profound surprise. The woman by his side was neither the American widow nor
her English daughter, but wholly a stranger to the ship's company he knew.
The training of the Lone Wolf had been wasted if one swift glance had
failed to comprehend every essential detail: that tall, straight, slender
figure cloaked in the folds of a garment whose hood framed a face of
singular pallor and sweetness in the moonlight, its shadowed eyes wide with
emotion, its lips a little parted....
With a shiver she lifted her hands to her eyes as if to darken the visions
of her imagination.
"They die out there," she said, in murmurs barely audible.... "We turn our
backs on them.... You think that right?"
"We play the game by the rules the enemy himself laid down," Lanyard
returned. "They would have sunk us without one qualm of pity--would, in all
probability, have shelled our boats had any succeeded in getting off. They
have done as much before, and will again. It is out of reason to insist
that the captain risk his ship in the hope of picking up one or two
drowning assassins."
"Risk his ship? How? They are helpless--"
"As a rule, U-boats hunt in pairs; always, when specially charged to sink
one certain vessel. It was so with the _Lusitania_, with the _Arabic_ as
well; I don't doubt it was so in this instance--that we should have heard
from a second submarine had not the destroyers opened fire when they did."