NED WONDERS
When the crash had come Ned Slade felt himself thrown back against
a deck stanchion, which he grasped desperately. In the instant of
the collision, or so immediately following it as to make it seem
simultaneous, he had observed a big hole torn in the side of the
_Sherman_.
Stunned and shaken, he clung to the stanchion while all about him were
confused shouts and orders and the rushing to and fro of many feet.
Almost as if in a dream, Ned saw the dark shape that had smashed into
the troopship slowly back away--pull itself out of the great gash that
had been cut. Then the fog swallowed it up.
He had slid to the deck after being hurled against the stanchion, and
now he pulled himself to his feet again. As he did so he saw himself
surrounded by a number of officers and men who had not been standing
near him when the crash came. They looked from Ned to the hole in the
side of the transport, and then out into the fog.
“What was it?” some one asked.
“I--I don’t know,” confusedly murmured Ned. And then it occurred to him
that he did know--that he had seen exactly what had happened. So he
answered: “A steamer crashed into us. She’s out there!”
He pointed to the mist that was thicker than ever.
“What ship was it?”
“Did you see the name?”
“Why doesn’t she stand by and give assistance?”
“I didn’t notice what the name was,” he managed to answer. “She just
crashed into us--right here--and then she backed out.” He pointed to
the gaping hole.
“Queer she backed out again,” commented a ship’s officer. “She might
better have held her nose in the hole. That is, if it’s below the water
line. But it isn’t,” he added quickly, as he leaned over the rail to
take an observation. “We’re safe, so far. The lowest part of the hole
is above the water line. But why doesn’t she let us know who she is?
Why doesn’t she signal?”
It was queer, the absolute absence of sound from the other craft.
Except for that gaping hole, it was as though she had been a figment of
the imagination.
“She doesn’t whistle,” said the officer, who had looked over the side,
“and I don’t hear any shouting. Surely she’s still near enough for us
to hear from her. Are you sure it was a vessel?” he asked Ned. “Who
else was here with you at the time?”
That question gave Ned a shock. That was it! Who had been with him at
the time?
Why of course Jerry, Bob and Professor Snodgrass. And there was some
one else--the sailor from whose person the little scientist had been
about to remove a bug. It all came back to Ned now.
“Are you sure it was a vessel?” the officer asked again. “It may have
been an iceberg. I’ve been bumped by them more than once.”
“It was a vessel,” answered Ned, and his mind was struggling with two
matters. One was to answer the questions put to him, and the other was
to try to think what had become of Bob, Jerry and the professor. He was
confusing things.
“It was a vessel,” he went on. “I could see the camouflage paint on
her. She slammed right into us and then backed off.”
“That’s queer,” murmured the officer. “If she was under steam she could
blow her whistle, and even if she was disabled, as we are, she could
ring a bell. But there isn’t a sound.”
“It must have been an iceberg,” declared another officer. “That would
account for everything--even the silence.”
“It wasn’t an iceberg!” declared Ned. “I saw the camouflage paint. And
look! You can see where some of it is scraped off on the broken end of
our rail.”
He pointed to a jagged timber. It was true. Amid the splinters were
flecks of blue and white paint.
“He’s right!” assented the first officer. “Besides, if it was an
iceberg there’d be chunks of it on our decks now. And there isn’t a
cubic inch. It was another ship!”
“But what kind?” cried several. “Why doesn’t she signal us and see if
she can help?”
The officer had an answer ready for that question. He had not sailed
the seven seas without knowing something of the mysteries of the vast
places.
“A derelict,” he said.
“A derelict!” came the chorus. Then they understood.
Then came a barrage of questions, chief among them being:
“How could an abandoned derelict back away?”
“She probably didn’t,” the first officer said. “The shock of the
collision probably separated us, and a stray current did the rest. I
only hope she keeps away from us!”
The first excitement following the crash having passed, it remained to
make certain just how badly damaged the _Sherman_ was and to ascertain
the number of her crew and passengers who had been injured.
A hasty examination disclosed the fact that the hole in the side was
well above the water line. Except in the event of a storm the transport
would not leak. And, even in that case, the flooding of one more
compartment would not be fatal.
In regard to the personal damage, though, the troopship had not come
off so well. Several had been killed when the prow of the derelict
had bit into the _Sherman’s_ side, for several decks were involved in
the damage done, and all along the rails, at the point of the crash,
men had been standing. Doctors and nurses found themselves with many
new casual cases to look after, as well as those with which they had
started out. The dead, of course, were beyond help, and their poor,
maimed bodies were tenderly laid aside. There were some of the injured
whose recovery was in doubt, but others were only slightly hurt.
But military discipline, added to that of the naval officers, soon
brought comparative order out of chaos, and then, or even before, boats
were lowered to pick up any who might have been tossed by the collision
into the sea.
One or two of these were picked up floating near the _Sherman_, and
some had been hurt.
Just how many were missing could not be ascertained until the lists
were gone over. But Ned lost no time after a hasty survey of those
picked up in telling that Jerry, Bob and Professor Snodgrass, all of
whom had been talking with him a moment before the crash, were not to
be found.
“We’ll have a thorough search made,” said the ship’s captain, when
Ned’s story was repeated. “If necessary I’ll keep boats cruising about
all night.”
And he did. Sailors, marines, and soldiers formed searching parties in
lifeboats, but they were handicapped by the fog. They dared not go far
away from the _Sherman_ for fear of being lost themselves, and their
shouts brought no response. Some floating wreckage was picked up, part
of it from the troopship and some from the unknown derelict. “Unknown”
because nothing that was found afloat after the crash disclosed her
identity.
“But what has become of Jerry, Bob and the professor?” wondered Ned.
“They were with me. Their bodies are not among the dead--I’m thankful
for that--nor are they in the list of wounded. They weren’t picked up
by the boats. But where are they?”
And as Ned wondered and wondered the fearful conviction was borne to
him that his three friends must have been injured or killed by the
crash and have been flung into the sea, their bodies at once sinking.