Ruth Fielding had made preparations for travel many times before; but
this venture she was about to undertake was different from her previous
flights from the Red Mill.
"Oh, my pretty! Oh, my pretty!" sighed Aunt Alvirah Boggs. "It seems as
though this life is just made up of partings. You ain't no more to home
than you're off again. And how do I know I shall ever set my two eyes on
you once more, Ruthie?"
"I've always come back so far, Aunt Alvirah--like the bad penny that I
am," Ruth told her cheerfully.
"Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" groaned Aunt Alvirah, sinking into her
chair by the sunny window. "No bad penny in your case, my pretty. Your
returns air always like that of the bluebird's in the spring--and jest as
much for happiness as they say the bluebird is. What would your Uncle
Jabez and me do without you?"
"But it will be only for a few months. I might remain away as long if I
returned to Ardmore for my junior year."
"Ah, but that's not like going away over to France where there is so
much danger and trouble," the little old woman objected.
"Don't worry about me, dear," urged Ruth, with great gentleness.
"We don't know what may happen," continued Aunt Alvirah. "A single month
at my time o' life is longer'n a year at your age, my pretty."
"Oh, I am sure to come back," Ruth cried.
"We'll hope so. I shall pray for you, my pretty. But there'll be fear
eatin' at our hearts every day that you are so far from us."
Uncle Jabez likewise expressed himself as loath to have her go; yet his
extreme patriotism inspired him to wish her Godspeed cheerfully.
"I vum! I'd like to be goin' with you. Only with Old Betsey on my
shoulder!" declared the miller. "You don't want to take the old gun with
you, do you, Niece Ruth?" he added, with twinkling eyes. "I've had her
fixed. And she ought to be able to shoot a Hun or two yet."
"I am not going to shoot Germans," said Ruth, shaking her head. "I only
hope to do what I can in saving our boys after the battles. I can't even
nurse them--poor dears! My all that I do seems so little."
"Ha!" grunted Uncle Jabez. "I reckon you'll do full and plenty. If you
don't it'll be the first time in your life that you fall down on a job."
Which was remarkably warm commendation for the miller to give, and Ruth
appreciated it deeply.
He drove her to town himself and put her on the train for New York.
"Don't you git into no more danger over there than you kin help, Niece
Ruth," he urged. "Good-bye!"
She traveled alone to the metropolis, and that without hearing from or
seeing any of her fellow-workers at the Red Cross rooms in Robinsburg.
She did wonder much, however, what the outcome of the fire had been.
What had become of Mrs. Rose Mantel, the woman in black? Had she been
finally suspected by Mr. Mayo, and would she be refused further work
with the organization because of the outcome of the fire? Ruth could not
but believe that the conflagration had been caused to cover shortages in
the Red Cross accounts.
At the Grand Central Terminal Ruth was met by a very lovely lady, a
worker in the Red Cross, who took her home to her Madison Avenue
residence, where Ruth was to remain for the few days she was to be in
the city.
"It is all I can do," said the woman smiling, when Ruth expressed her
wonder that she should have turned her beautiful home into a clearing
house for Red Cross workers. "It is all I can do. I am quite alone now,
and it cheers me and gives me new topics of interest to see and care for
the splendid girls who are really going over there to help our
soldiers."
Later Ruth Fielding learned that this woman's two sons were both in
France--one in a medical corps and the other in the trenches. She had
already given her all, it seemed; but she could not do too much for the
country.
The several girls the lady entertained at this time had little
opportunity for amusement. The Red Cross ship was to sail within
forty-eight hours.
Ruth was able to meet many of the members of her supply unit, and found
them a most interesting group. They had come from many parts of the
country and had brought with them varied ideas about the work and of
what they were "going up against."
All, however, seemed to be deeply interested in the Red Cross and the
burden the war had laid upon them. They were not going to France to
play, but to serve in any way possible.
There was a single disturbing element in the bustling hurry of getting
under way. At this late moment the woman who had been chosen as chief of
the supply unit was deterred from sailing. Serious illness in her family
forced her to resign her position and remain to nurse those at home. It
was quite a blow to the unit and to the Commissioner himself.
The question, Who will take her place? became the most important thought
in the minds of the members of the unit. Ruth fully understood that to
find a person as capable as the woman already selected would not be an
easy matter.
Until the hour the party left New York for Philadelphia, the port of
sail for the Red Cross ship, no candidate had been settled on by the
Commissioner to head the supply unit.
"We shall find somebody. I have one person in mind right now who may be
the very one. If so, this person will be shipped by a faster vessel and
by another convoy than yours," and he laughed. "You may find your chief
in Paris when you get there."
Ruth wondered to herself if they really would get there. At this time
the German submarines were sinking even the steamships taking Red Cross
workers and supplies across. The Huns had thrown over their last vestige
of humanity.
The ship which carried the Red Cross units joined a squadron of other
supply ships outside Cape May. The guard ships were a number of busy and
fast sailing torpedo boat destroyers. They darted around the slower
flotilla of merchant steamships like "lucky-bugs" on a millpond.
Ruth shared her outside cabin with a girl from Topeka, Kansas--an
exceedingly blithe and boisterous young person.
"I never imagined there was so much water in the ocean!" declared this
young woman, Clare Biggars. "Look at it! Such a perfectly awful waste of
it. If the ocean is just a means of communication between countries, it
needn't be any wider than the Missouri River, need it?"
"I am glad the Atlantic is a good deal wider than that," Ruth said
seriously. "The Kaiser and his armies would have been over in our
country before this in that case."
Clare chuckled. "Lots of the farming people in my section are Germans,
and three months ago they noised it abroad that New York had been
attacked by submarines and flying machines and that a big army of their
fellow-countrymen were landing in this country at a place called Montauk
Point----"
"The end of Long Island," interposed Ruth.
"And were going to march inland and conquer the country as they marched.
They would do to New York State just what they have done to Belgium and
Northern France. It was thought, by their talk, that all the Germans
around Topeka would rise and seize the banks and arsenals and all."
"Why didn't they?" asked Ruth, much amused.
"Why," said Clare, laughing, too, "the police wouldn't let them."
The German peril by sea, however, was not to be sneered at. As the fleet
approached the coast of France it became evident that the officers of
the Red Cross ship, as well as those of the convoy, were in much
anxiety.
There seems no better way to safeguard the merchant ships than for the
destroyers to sail ahead and "clear the way" for the unarmored vessels.
But a sharp submarine commander may spy the coming flotilla through his
periscope, sink deep to allow the destroyers to pass over him, and then
rise to the surface between the destroyers and the larger ships and
torpedo the latter before the naval vessels can attack the subsea boat.
For forty-eight hours none of the girls of the Red Cross supply unit had
their clothing off or went to bed. They were advised to buckle on life
preservers, and most of them remained on deck, watching for submarines.
It was scarcely possible to get them below for meals.
The strain of the situation was great. And yet it was more excitement
over the possibility of being attacked than actual fear.
"What's the use of going across the pond at such a time if we're not
even to see a periscope?" demanded Clare. "My brother, Ben, who is
coming over with the first expedition of the National Army, wagered me
ten dollars I wouldn't know a periscope if I saw one. I'd like to earn
that ten. Every little bit adds to what you've got, you know."
It was not the sight of a submarine periscope that startled Ruth
Fielding the evening of the next-to-the-last day of the voyage. It was
something she heard as she leaned upon the port rail on the main deck,
quite alone, looking off across the graying water.
Two people were behind her, and out of sight around the corner of the
deckhouse. One was a man, with a voice that had a compelling bark.
Whether his companion was a man or a woman Ruth could not tell. But the
voice she heard so distinctly began to rasp her nerves--and its
familiarity troubled her, too.
Now and then she heard a word in English. Then, of a sudden, the man
ejaculated in German:
"The foolish ones! As though this boat would be torpedoed with us
aboard! These Americans are crazy."
Ruth wheeled and walked quickly down the deck to the corner of the
house. She saw the speaker sitting in a deck chair beside another person
who was so wrapped in deck rugs that she could not distinguish what he
or she looked like.
But the silhouette of the man who had uttered those last words stood out
plainly between Ruth and the fading light. He was tall, with heavy
shoulders, and a fat, beefy face. That smoothly shaven countenance
looked like nobody that she had ever seen before; but the barking voice
sounded exactly like that of Legrand, Mrs. Rose Mantel's associate and
particular friend!