At dinner that last night, the place of the wireless youth was vacant.
So was the place of the Dutch official next Lady Neave, whom they called
Lady Gieve, because during the first days she had worn her jacket of
that name, deflated, but evident, all day and, according to report, all
night. Half-way across the Atlantic she had been smiled out of her fears
to the extent of carrying the life-preserver over her arm.
Miss Ellis was the only person who took no part in discussing the rumor
which ran about the ship of a wireless message said to have been
received by the Dutch official. His bedroom steward, also Dutch, had
seen the message--"A great battle and a German defeat."
The news accounted beyond doubt for the increased noisiness in the
dining saloon. From the table behind Newcomb rose excited accents, "_Es
ist unglaueblich!_"
Newcomb turned, and caught Miss Ellis's eye. He had changed his place to
the empty one beside her after hearing that Mr. Grant wasn't coming
down--"a headache."
"The wireleless leakage seems to have let loose a fair amount of _furor
Teutonicus_," he said.
She nodded; plainly she had heard the news. But she didn't want to
discuss it at a board where old Professor Mohrenheim and his gentle,
kindly wife occupied their places, as polite as ever, but restrained
and preoccupied to-night. Voices from the all-German table rose louder.
It was known that on the last voyage excitement over some war news,
published in the customary small weekly, had led to a riot. Certain
offended patriots, among both Germans and their opponents, had been
brought to port in irons. This was the first crossing during which no
newspaper had been issued, and no wireless telegrams had appeared on the
notice-board. The wisdom of these measures was abundantly proved. The
mere breath of rumor had transformed the ship's company. Allies put
their heads together and exulted. Neutrals argued more or less openly,
betraying in every word the impossibility of neutrality. The old German
couple at the end of Nan's table sat marooned. They glanced now and
then, wistfully, at the all-German table next them. The sound of their
tongue rumbled and clashed above the jar of crockery and service metal.
"Isn't it strange,"--Nan leaned to Newcomb as she lowered her
voice,--"when I _used_ to hear German, I'd think about music and poetry
and beautiful words like _Waldesduft_--"
"And what do you think about now--words like Belgium?"
"That isn't fair," she said quietly. "All war is awful."
"But I'd like to know what you do think about, then, instead of music
and _Waldesduft_."
"No."
He urged her. "Please!"
"I couldn't, not at the same table where that dear old couple sit," she
said quickly and glanced down the long table at the Mohrenheims.
"Tell me upstairs?"
She shook her head.
"I don't think I shall even upstairs. If, as I believe, the worst
stories aren't true, it's wrong to repeat them."
"Why is it wrong to tell me and let me judge if I am to believe?"
But she wouldn't. "To repeat them gives them a false trueness," she said
in that careful undertone. "Oh, I can't explain; but just to put them
into words seems to spread a poison."
"You can't trust me to distinguish, to help you to distinguish?"
Again she shook her head. "What I have to think is, if some people,
mistaken people, believed such things about us Americans, what would I
say if I were asked whether I thought it a good thing that the false
stories against us should be repeated? To make horrible pictures in
people's brains; and, if the brains are weak, to turn them."
"I am sorry my brains inspire you with such distrust."
"Perhaps it's my own I'm shaky about. But I don't believe any brain can
keep steady under some stories. No; mustn't think about them."
"She gets that from Grant," Newcomb decided. He looked across the table.
Next the captain's empty place, sat the only person in the saloon
unmoved, you would say, by the news--a British naval officer, grave,
monosyllabic, and showing just that same face throughout the voyage. Not
so much as a hint about his errand to the States and little enough about
anything else. Until the fourth night out he had slept or dozed over a
book. The only five minutes during which he had appeared really awake
had been when some one in the smoking-room repeated Julian Grant's
asseveration that the German atrocity stories were "faked." "Every
nation tells of its enemy. Only the ignorant and unthinking are taken
in."
It was then that the officer dozing in the corner lifted that face of
his, with its hard, fine outline like a profile on an old coin, and came
to life. The indifference cleared out of his eyes as low-hung,
slumbering smoke will clear before the blast.
"If to be taken in by 'faked' stories was _all_ that the innocent had to
fear!" In cold accents he told about a Belgian girl. Daughter of an
officer in the Belgian Army, a man he knew. When the Germans took Antwerp
she was carried off. Fell into the hands of a U-boat captain. When he'd
done with her, handed her over to his crew. She didn't die quickly
enough. They threw her overboard. "An officer's daughter!" he repeated,
as though that were the culminating point of the horror.
Some one repeated the story to Julian. His anger was a thing no one
would forget. _Believe_ it? Such stories were told for a purpose. It was
"the kind of poison that infects people's wits and loses them their
souls. Makes brute beasts out of humans. There are minds that batten on
such lies. They get decent people to listen in the fevered, abnormal
state all nerves are in nowadays. Foulness that would be choked back
down their obscene throats at other times, it's listened to like some
message out of Sinai or Olympus. I tell you the German U-boat captains
are as good men as ever the hag War breeds. They _must_ be men of
character. You daren't give a job like that to a drunken, rotten roue."
Here was Miss Greta at last, never so late before and never so
resplendent. Silver sequins and black lace for that last night.
"I'm glad"--she spoke to a lady across the table--"glad to see you've
emancipated yourself."
"Emancipated--how?" Lady Neave asked.
"You've broken the tyranny of the Gieve jacket."
"Don't tell me I've--" Lady Neave turned to look at the back of her
chair--"yes, gone and forgotten it!" She moved outward on her swiveled
seat.
"No! no!" The congressman from Vermont protested there was no need to
prepare for anything so grotesque, so melodramatic, as a cold-blooded
attempt to sink this poor old tub.
Miss Greta held high her braid-crowned head. "This innocent old tub,"
she said, "has carried thousands of tons of ammunition; but," she added
relentingly, "I don't think Lady Gieve--oh, forgive me! I mean Lady
Neave," she bent gracious brows upon her opposite neighbor,--"I _quite_
agree you won't need your packet on this voyage."
No one answered. In the midst of a general animation, the silence that
reigned again around Greta spoke loud. She stared about her.
"What has become of the hors d'oeuvres?" she demanded. The Dutch
steward could not have helped hearing. He went on serving the others.
Again she spoke to him, more sharply still.
"Alvays it ees somet'ing! From de fir-rst you come on board," he
muttered incoherently.
She turned round in her seat.
"What? _What_ do you say?"
"Vhat I say? You need not be down on me because Zhermany is beat."
Miss Greta stared.
"Germany beaten! You must be mad."
The steward's face had grown red; his anger was mounting still.
"I get it straight," he said. "Dere vas a great battle. De English and
French have beat de Zhermans."
"It is a lie!"
"How do you know that?" asked the calm voice of Newcomb at Greta's side.
"How does one know anything? You wouldn't expect me to consider the
possibility of such a thing just because"--her contempt followed the
steward for those first yards of his progress toward the side
table--"because _that_ sort of creature says so?" She looked round for
understanding. Something in the averted eyes of the company nettled her.
"He says it, _armer Wurm_," she went on with her head high, "from the
same motives that make others long to believe it. Jealousy."
"Do we understand you to say," Newcomb asked, "that you wouldn't believe
news, however authentic, of a German defeat?"
"There _couldn't_ be authentic news of a German defeat. If it came from
some one I knew and trusted, if all the people I know and trust combined
to say there had been a German defeat, I should know they were wrong."
While she waited for the hors d'oeuvres, her handsome shoulders thrown
back, her chin high, she pronounced a paean to Kultur cum militarism.
Newcomb construed it as a letting off pent-up steam, a vent for anger
against Miss Ellis and against the gathering cloud of enemies. But it
was also something more. It had in it an element of fanaticism, mixed
with balked passion for force. A reckless joy in the doctrine of
stick-at-nothing to serve the end. With such an accent we have heard
some one very old, or very young and weak saying, "_We_ bombed them out
of the wood," or, "_We_ took Hill 60." It is a singular thing in
psychology and yet to be explored, this passion on the part of the
physically weaker for those very brute forces in the universe which, but
for their opposites, would be the sure undoing of all but the physically
strongest, and, in the end, of them as well.
In the midst of her hymn to pro-Teutonism, Ashmole came in, looking more
idiotic than usual, staring about out of his big glasses as though he
couldn't recognize the table.
"Here we are," Miss Greta hailed him.
The youth paused by her chair an instant and mumbled something
unintelligible, his eyes goggling as they swept the saloon.
"They told me the captain was down here."
Greta took hold of Ashmole's arm and tried in vain to pull him into the
vacant place. He stood there lost while she whispered. Suddenly he bent
and whispered back. They had done too much whispering in these last days
for that to strike any one as specially strange. What struck Newcomb was
the effect on Miss Greta of whatever it was Ashmole had said.
On the face that had met with brazen defiance the news of a German
defeat, was stamped something more than consternation. Ashmole's own
nerves were not so shaken, but he saw that.
"It's all right," he said in the act of turning from her; "they won't
get us. The lights are all out."
"Lights out, you say!" Greta had risen.
"Every port covered," Ashmole muttered over his shoulder.
"Fools! They must put the lights on. Do you hear? Instantly!" She
clutched her chair back. "_This_ isn't the boat they want--"
Nan had risen, too. But that was because she saw Julian at the door of
the saloon. Without a word he held up his hand. Equally without sound,
she slipped away from the table and went toward the waiting figure. As
she reached the door, a dull sound came, with a long shuddering. It
passed through the ship from end to end. Instead of the echo of that
detonation setting the whole place instantly in motion, it had the
effect of stilling for those first seconds such motion as had been.
Several hundred tongues ceased wagging. Forks and spoons remained,
arrested, half-way to people's mouths. The waiters stood, dish-covers in
their hands, or bottles lifted to fill glass. The very engines slowed to
listen.
Even after the general movement began in the saloon, it was quiet
movement and curiously undramatic; no crying out, no mad rush for the
deck.
Some people looked about as if for information. Others tried to smile.
"It's come," said the congressman.
"What--_what_ has come?" demanded Lady Neave through the rising hum.
Out of all the growing murmur and movement Newcomb heard Greta's tense
whisper: "_That_--a torpedo?"
* * * * *
The captain's order traveled with a superhuman quickness:
"Life-belts first! Women and children to the boats!"
"Plenty of time for everybody to get a life-belt," was another form that
ran from mouth to mouth. Whether that insistence calmed the people,
certainly it was a strangely well-behaved company that made its way, in
spite of the ship's increasing list to starboard, along corridors and up
companionways. Scarcely a breach in the general self-control till, on
the lifeboat-deck, parties were broken up, and all men told to stand
back. Though the great majority accepted the order in silence, it broke
the courage of some among the women. Certain men tried persuasion. There
were dumb partings; there was agonized resistance. Two or three
evidently meant to stand out to the bitter end against being saved, or
lost, apart from their men-folk. For a minute the morale of the crowd
was in grave danger. A young wife's recurrent sob: "I can't! I can't!"
rose to wildness with, "They'll have to kill me first!"
Newcomb, looking vainly about for Nan Ellis, saw a different face. Oh,
yes, it belonged to that voice he had been hearing under all the rest,
patient, gentle, tireless--the voice saying now in its foreign-sounding
English "It is for your husband's safety that you go first." More than
the words, the motherly kindness on the blunt-featured face of the old
German lady, prevailed upon the distracted girl. She let go her
husband's arm and clung to Mrs. Mohrenheim.
Newcomb saw now that it was Mrs. Mohrenheim who was helping the ship's
officers to marshal and send forward the women and children to those who
had charge of the boats. It looked as if the task would have been too
much for the officers but for Mrs. Mohrenheim. An extraordinary vigor,
an exalted persuasiveness, had transformed the heavy figure and the
homely face. Something she had given no hint of during the voyage came
out of hiding and "took charge."
In spite of the increased listing of the ship, through all his own
excitement and personal fear, which Newcomb afterwards confessed, his
habit of mechanical mental registry kept him vividly aware of what went
on within his range.
Already, while Mrs. Mohrenheim was still dealing with that first and
most unwilling of the young wives, Newcomb had seen Miss Greta pass. It
hadn't taken her long to fling on a serge skirt and her fur-lined
ulster. Above the life-belt fastened round her bulky figure was a brown
canvas ruck-sack hoisted high against her shoulder-blades. She was
fastening the buckles as she hastened toward her appointed boat, put a
little out of her stride by the ever-stronger list to starboard. All the
same, Miss Greta, beyond a doubt, would be among the first, Newcomb told
himself, to take her appointed place, and hers would be the first boat
launched.
"You will carry the child for this lady?"
Mrs. Mohrenheim had thrust a baby into Newcomb's arms.
"They say it's this way--this way!" The baby's mother, holding a little
boy by the hand, hurried the child and Newcomb up the deck. The barrier
of officers, stewards, and crew opened to let them through.
Yes, Miss Greta was already in the boat. The woman with the little boy
was helped in, and Newcomb handed over the baby. The men at the pulleys
began to lower the boat. Miss Greta was calmly tying a motor-veil round
her cap.
Up on the bridge the captain, against a star-strewn sky, calling down
orders, gave an impression of such tragic and awful loneliness that
Newcomb was aware of a relief at seeing him joined by another figure.
The two stood speaking while you might count seven or eight; then the
captain pulled off his coat and exchanged with the captain of the watch.
The captain of the watch came running down, putting on his chief's coat.
He took charge of the next boat that was being lowered. That was the
boat that tilted and hung for some seconds over the water at an angle of
forty-five degrees. The angle increased to the perpendicular, and the
boat whirled round, dropping the people into the oily water. The calm
night air struck icily on Newcomb's sweat-beaded forehead. A horror of
violent death had pierced the numbness that followed on his first panic.
On the way back to the diminishing crowd of women he peered into men's
faces.
"Do they realize?" he kept repeating to himself.
"Where were you when it struck us?" he heard some one ask an officer.
"Chart-room," was the curt reply.
Another voice as Newcomb passed said: "Not the periscope; but I saw the
shark-fin wake of the torpedo."
Newcomb walked with difficulty, like a drunken man; it was this damned
list. The most violent tossing in a hurricane was preferable. You'd have
the plunging dive and recovery, which had something gallant in it,
almost playful, like a giant gamboling. But this persistent violation of
equilibrium got on a man's nerve.
"The lights have gone out on the starboard side," some one said.
Newcomb pulled out his watch. Stopped! He held it to his ear. No, it was
going. And all this had happened in those few beggarly moments!
"What's that yelling about?" he asked irritably of a couple of men who,
half-doubled, came up the slant by the wireless-room passage.
"Boat on the other side--smashed like an egg-shell against the hull."
People were drowning on both sides of the sinking ship.
"It's often safest on board," someone said.
"Yes; you stick to the ship."
There was now a dense crowd of men round the companionway. All but a
handful of women had been distributed to the boats, but the handful kept
on being renewed. Newcomb saw why. Grant and Miss Ellis, among others,
were bringing up the people who remained over, in the second and third
class. And among these huddled groups still the squat figure and the
beautiful-ugly face of old Mrs. Mohrenheim moved, consoling,
heartening.
"Yes, he will come after," she said. "Surely you will think about your
children." More than once she had taken her text from a bystander's
face. "Look at him, poor man! He can save himself if he has not you to
think about. You would not risk his life? No, no. _Komm_, then, _komm_."
The woman was passed along.
The mere getting to the boats was a trial of courage. Newcomb himself
had no love of the horrible chute that now pitched sharply down to that
dark, oily glitter that was the sea, but he offered to convoy the
late-comers wherever a boat might be.
"No, you two." Mrs. Mohrenheim summoned Grant and Nan Ellis. Slowly they
made their way forward with the little group of clinging children and
bewildered women. Some crawled on hands and knees up the steep acclivity
to where a boat swung from the davits. An officer passed the groups
without stopping. He came hurrying, sliding, half squatting, with one
leg stretched slanting down, the other crooked up, with the knee turned
sharply out.
"You, now," he said to Mrs. Mohrenheim as he rose to his full height
beside her.
"There are two ladies more." She pushed them forward.
The officer steadied them as they passed, and turned again to Mrs.
Mohrenheim.
"_You._"
"There are those by the door; one is young." She turned unsteadily.
The officer clutched her. "I tell you,"--Newcomb barely caught the
words--"it's now or never. _There aren't boats enough!_"
"I know," said Mrs. Mohrenheim.
She drew back and stretched out a hand to a muffled figure holding to a
stanchion above where she stood. It was Professor Mohrenheim. Newcomb
realized now that the figure had been there from the first.
"We have been together for forty years," the old woman said. "Too long
to be parted now." Her husband bent down and took her hand. Now he had
drawn her up beside him.
A man with bare feet and a blanket round him rushed on deck as word
came, blown along from group to group, "The captain says every one
for'ard, and each for himself."
Down by the bridge they were launching a collapsible raft.
The last Newcomb, or any one, saw of the Mohrenheims, they were standing
together. They held to each other and to the stanchion.
* * * * *
Grant followed the girl down the swinging ladder to the raft.
Some one was crying:
"Get away! Pull out! For God's sake, get away!" Another, equally
unrecognizable in the dimness, called out:
"She's going down! We'll be drawn in!"
As they pushed off, they saw the electric lights on the _Leyden_ go out
one by one.
Of the people on the raft more than one watched the death-throes of the
ship with wet eyes, as though she were something sentient, human. Her
angle of subsidence had changed sharply. The bow sank, leaving the stern
nearly upright. Her mast was gone. For an instant her funnel lay along
the water, and then with a dull roar as of the engines breaking loose
and crashing down to the bottom, the rest of the _Leyden_ sank out of
sight.
The end of the great ship had come with a horrible quietness, in
contrast to the cries of men struggling for their lives in the wash
among the wreckage.
The captain had gone down with the ship. When those in charge of the
raft heard that some one had seen him jump clear, they sent up a rocket.
By that addition to the starlight, for a few instants a single,
half-empty lifeboat could be seen rocking violently on the swell.
Several men were clinging to the gunwale. As raft and boat were swept
nearer, the officer in charge of the raft raised a shout. He had
recognized the captain climbing into the boat, and hauling up after him
the limp body of one of his companions.
The captain's first care, when he came alongside, was to relieve the
congestion on the raft. He ordered the chief engineer to transfer eight
or ten. The chief engineer remembered his helpers. Grant and Newcomb
were told off. Yes, the captain said, they must bring the only woman
into the lifeboat.
When the transference had been effected, another rocket was sent up in
order that the surviving boats might come together.
"Look!" The girl grasped Grant's arm.
The captain, too, turned his head.
"By God!" he said.