Jeb felt himself seized by the shoulder and torn from the davit to which
he held. Confusedly he heard Tim yelling: "Swim off as far as ye can,
lad!" and the next instant he was plunging downward, striking the ship's
side and sliding, bounding off, turning, striking again and sliding,
till he splashed into the water.
When his head came up--providentially with its senses--the sergeant's
command lingered and he set his face away, swimming with all his might.
Once or twice he paused for breath, because it is hard work propelling a
life belt through the water, but these rests were momentary; till,
feeling himself safe from suction, he turned over on his back and
floated. In this position he could see the ship, and was just in time to
watch the last of its passengers leave the rail. These were Tim and a
pretty nurse who had been too frightened at the dizzy height to take
the leap until, tearing free her hold, he had lifted her in his arms and
skidded down the side.
There was no confusion now. The sea had never seemed more peaceful.
Heads were bobbing merrily in the water, as though in for a pleasure
swim; beyond them lay the steamer, abjectly motionless--looking like a
monster which might have arisen from the deeps to bask upon the surface.
Jeb was wondering if he should not yet swim back and try to climb
aboard, when the great hulk swayed--gently at first, this way and that;
then, as if tender hands were lowering it into a grave, it slowly began
to sink.
At this point the prevailing quiet was shattered by a hell of sounds.
Had a score of nearby thunder storms been raging and a hundred frame
houses ruthlessly been crushed between two great forces, their combined
noises might have been compared to those issuing from the stricken
vessel as she took her plunge--until the closing waters choked them into
a kind of gurgling silence, as though a bellowing giant were being
drowned instead of a thing of splintering wood and groaning steel.
Dazed as Jeb was, he saw a mountain-high wave of seething foam rise from
the grave and roar toward him with the speed of unchecked horses.
Tossing like jack-straws on its crest were bunks, in part or whole,
chairs, planking, and debris of all descriptions. As it drew near he
took a deep breath and crossed his arms to protect his face. The next
second it was atop of him.
An eternity seemed to pass before he came up--an eternity during which
he rolled over and over in a seething green wilderness. When, choked and
coughing, he gained the surface he felt that it had been changed into
another world. The former peace of waters scarcely disturbed by gentle
waves whereon heads had bobbed in apparent merriment, the listed ship
that had lain sleeping on the skyline, were gone; in their stead was a
great waste of hissing bubbles which burst about his face and blinded
him. The surface had become an ocean of hisses--as though the submarine,
agent of that nation which generates hate, had by some wicked magic
changed the water with its hatred, too! And in the midst of this
confusion a chorus of three hundred passionate voices wailed their
anguish to a passive God; for, while these human beings had been whole
before, there were now many whom the sweeping wreckage had torn--some
with fractured bones, some disembowled, some mercifully dead! Never
could Jeb have dreamed a transition so horrible!
Already scores of panic-stricken were climbing on an overturned boat,
drifting off to the right. Another upturned boat floated at a greater
distance, and Jeb saw the bobbing heads appear again, beginning to move
as a flock of swimming ducks toward it. But many heads did not move at
all, and he knew what their inertia meant. One of this kind floated
close to him, and made him sick. He pushed it away, but it kept drifting
back, seeming unwilling to leave him, till in desperation he untied the
life belt tapes and let it sink. An hour earlier, had Jeb been told he
could do this, he would have screamed denials.
Presently a voice hailed him cheerily, and he beheld Tim, still holding
the little nurse, balanced on a kind of box affair that floated almost
flush with the water.
"Come over, Jeb," the sergeant called. "Shure, an' there's room for wan
more, an' 'tis cold ye'll be, I'm thinkin' afore we turn in tonight!"
"He oughtn't to joke like that," Jeb thought, beginning now to shiver;
for he had become tired, and swam the intervening distance painfully.
"Easy, lad," Tim leaned to give him a hand, "for if ye don't look smart
'tis off we go agin, an' 'twon't do the lass no good bein' colder'n she
is! Did I hurt ye now, me darlin'?" he asked a moment later of the
little nurse, who smiled back at him. Blood and water were trickling
down her ashen face from a scalp wound; yet she was many times more
fortunate than scores of other poor creatures near to them. There is an
unparalleled ruthlessness in a sweeping wave of heavy debris, beneath
which a human body can be ground to atoms.
Jeb had no more than safely got astride the box--a tippy affair it
was--when they were startled by someone blaspheming in a way that made
their flesh creep. Even Tim blanched; for in the voice he recognized the
timbre of insanity. He had seen this happen in the trenches, when men
driven mad by concussion or gas or horrors ran amuck among their
fellows. The one who now swam toward them was evidently a stoker--a
powerful creature. His face was grimed with coal dirt, his eyes were
red, and his blasphemies were interspersed with hilarity at the prospect
of cutting their throats. When thirty yards off he stopped swimming,
reached beneath the life belt and got out a knife--then, holding it
conveniently between his teeth, came on.
Jeb would have left the box and made a dash for the open sea had not Tim
checked him by a firm command; for, with the little nurse wounded in his
arms, the sergeant had but one recourse and he was man enough to take
it.
"Be smart now, Jeb," he said. "Reach thot broken oar, lad, lest it
floats past ye! Now brace yeself, an' whin the poor divil gits clost,
belt 'im wan on the head wid all yer might! Kill 'im the first crack!"
"Kill him!" Jeb screamed in horror. "Kill him! Man, I can't!"
"Ye fool, ye can an' ye will!" Tim's voice bit into him like a file.
"D'ye want 'im up here slittin' the throats av us--an' this gir-rul to
boot? He's looney, man! 'Tis 'im, or the three av us! Quick--str-rike!"
Jeb felt his muscles turn to steel under this commanding voice. The
piece of oar rose high above his head and, as the crazed stoker was
about to lay hand upon the box, came down with all his strength.
The little nurse clung tighter to the sergeant and buried her face in
his tunic.
"Dear Christ!" she whispered, shivering.
The man floated slowly by, rising and falling easily with the waves. His
face hung downward in the water, his arms were extended in the attitude
of a benediction. After him trailed a narrow streak of red, growing
wider though less bright as it mingled with the sea.
"I wonder if the poor divil still has thot knife in his teeth," was
Tim's observation, spoken from the depth of sorrow.
Jeb held the broken oar out before him as a thing unclean, then opened
his fingers and let it fall.
Scarcely more than twenty minutes could have passed since the vessel
sank, but she had been struck late in the afternoon and the sun now
slanted perilously near the horizon. Tim and the little nurse looked at
it thoughtfully, but neither spoke. Only a slight pressure of their arms
suggested that each believed it would never rise for them--or, rising,
would look upon a sea of floating dead. Jeb had not noticed the sun. His
face was lowered close to the planking of their frail refuge. The ocean
had again become a thing of peace and beauty--and silence. Those who
were on upturned boats had realized the impotency of screaming, and
merely clung with dogged tenacity; those who had been too much lacerated
to reach these places of imperfect shelter, had yielded to the cradling
waves and were now asleep. Thus the minutes dragged. Then the sergeant
gave a cry of consternation.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot! May I be shot for a spy, if 'tain't
the submarine!"
Little more than a hundred yards away a monster was rising from the
sea. Jeb looked up just as the conning tower emerged with water rushing
off it like small Niagaras. Then, on a line of its submerged length, the
ocean seemed to heave, pressed upward by the long gray hull that now
broke through. It arose majestically, sleek as a bathing seal,
reflecting the westering sun like wet granite. Almost at once the
man-hatch in the conning tower opened, two sailors bobbed out and drew
respectfully aside as an officer climbed leisurely to deck. He stood
awhile twisting his mustache, gazing at the overturned boats with their
desperate crews; for the partially submerged box nearer by, and its
three human atoms, he had not yet noticed.
At sight of him the sergeant's temper flared.
"Look!" he cried. "Look, Jeb!--look, me darlin'!--see for wanst in yer
lives a murderin' sore dressed in the livery av a rotten master!" As the
officer turned in their direction Tim shook his fist at him, this time
becoming the incarnation of rage. "Turn yer ugly mug away!--turn it
away, I tell ye, from a sight too blessed for yer dirty eyes to see!--ye
cholera germ!--ye fester!--ye--ye----Oh, me darlin'," he wailed to the
little nurse, "if ye'd but go deaf a minute whilst I tell 'im what's in
me 'art!" And in disappointment he held his thumb to his nose, by this
most desperate sign trying to express the insults his tongue could not
utter.
Jeb was trembling.
"Don't make him mad, Tim," he implored. "He might kill us!"
"The dirty coward can only kill wan thing, an' thot's me body, but me
soul'll go on cussin' 'im till the ind av doom." He shook his fist
again, becoming more derisive: "Look at his head, now! If 'tain't the
shape av a rotten pear may I be shot for a spy!--mind ye how it slopes
up to a p'int, both fore-and-aft, and amidships; the fat-jowled swine!"
The man had been regarding them stolidly. He may not have understood
Tim's insults, but the gestures were unmistakable. Without taking away
his stare he spoke a brief command to one of the sailors who ducked
below, reappearing with a rifle.
Tim grew at once thoughtful, but Jeb, cowering lower, began to hurl
abuses at him. He had warned him, he cried; and now see what was going
to happen!
Without further ado the sailor took deliberate aim and fired; the little
nurse flinched, shuddered, and relaxed. Tim looked down at her with
widening, almost unbelieving, eyes; then raised his face to the sky and,
like a wounded animal, emitted one long howl. All of the plucky
sergeant's grief, fury, self-condemnation--aye, and love--were in that
wail of agony.
The sailor was aiming for another shot when Jeb's ears were filled with
a weird, screeching noise; a violent jolt of air almost knocked him from
the box, and a geyser of spray shot up ten feet from the submarine's
bow. Before even the deep boom of the distant gun that had fired this
projectile reached him, another screeching followed, another jolt of air
struck him in the face, and this time, with a mighty roar, the undersea
boat split almost in two.
Had not the officer and two sailors been so intent upon a petty revenge
they might have seen, coming at express speed between themselves and the
sun, a British fast patrol; however, it is difficult at best to detect
spots against so dazzling a light--and there is, besides, the working of
an all-powerful justice to be reckoned with!
The two sailors, standing between their commander and the explosion,
crumpled up as if they were air bags pricked with a knife; but the
officer did not fall. He staggered once, nearly losing his balance, and
then looked stupidly at the great hole into which roared a revenging
sea. His U-boat was sinking fast; though by no agency from within. Those
below would forever remain below; they had made their own grave, and
their casket would be the steel monster which typified the steel-clad
hand of another monster--their master!
But the officer did not think so loyally of his master when he found
himself about to face a Higher King. The steel-clad hand had forsaken
him; even the German God--the "made in Germany" one which German
professors and German pastors were loud in proclaiming as distinct and
more refined than the God who watches over England, France and
America--had now forsaken him. He felt the same impulse to howl that
Tim had felt, although love and self-condemnation were not a part of it;
only hatred. The water had reached his feet; with one more look around
he sprang outward and began to swim.
"I've been prayin' for thot, me darlin'," Tim whispered. His arms
relaxed from about the little dead nurse. With fingers of tenderness he
untied the life belt tapes, then let her sink gently into the waves.
"God bless ye, lass! 'Tis only today we met, but ye'll live wid Tim
Doreen an' no ither till he's sent west to ye!" Leaning forward he
watched her as she sank into the light green water, her hair streaming
gracefully upward as though waving him goodbye, till the brightness of
it was claimed by the darker green below. Then Tim became another man.
"Which way is thot----" he bellowed, but he saw the pear-shaped head
before Jeb could answer. With one gesture of fury he stripped off his
own life belt, and yelled: "Now, ye murderer av women, wan av us is due
in hell, an' 'tain't Tim Doreen, ayther, ye tub av slop!"
He struck out powerfully, straight for the man he had sworn to kill,
but in changing once from the overhand to side stroke he saw Jeb, white
as a sheet, swimming directly behind. Without pausing, he asked:
"W'ot the divil brings ye here?"
"I owe him something, too," Jeb panted. "I'm coming."
For an instant the sergeant forgot his oath, and a slow grin overspread
his face.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot?" he said. "God bless ye, lad; but ye
can help best by settin' on the box. 'Tis me own fight; do as I tell ye,
now!"
Jeb could not have described that fight, because he was too far off to
see distinctly--and Tim never referred to it. But he saw the German,
when Tim had come to within ten feet of him, turn and begin swimming
frantically away. There was doubtless something in the sergeant's eyes
that sapped the other's courage. Relentlessly Tim gained, each stroke
bringing him a few inches nearer, till he seemed to crawl up on the
officer's back. After that they might have been two splashing fish--till
Tim began slowly to swim back.
"God, Tim," Jeb cried, holding out a hand. "I wish you'd let me come!
I--I believe I might have done it!"
The sergeant drew himself on the tippy box, and panted:
"Ye'll have a chance, lad whin ye see ither dastardly things thim
outcasts do! No man can keep from fightin', Jeb! Shure, an' the Boches
make their own wur-rst inimies!"
He sat despondently, regaining his breath and blinking the water from
his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him
stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon--the Order
of the Iron Cross--which the German had worn in a breast button-hole of
his uniform.
"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot," he mused.
Slowly he twisted off the button, and the ribbon with it, then leaned
above the spot where the little nurse's hair had waved her last
farewell, and let them sink.
"'Tis me first dicoration, darlin'," he whispered; and it was not the
ocean water now that blinded him.
Just as the red sun dipped that night the patrol boat picked up the
last piece of human wreckage, and dashed toward the coast of France.