The submarine had risen and stood away to southward. So intent had the
occupants of the lifeboat been to discover some sign of their companions
that the discovery of themselves by the submarine flash came with a
shock of surprise. In the light of that pale ray, which had picked them
out of the darkness, they saw in that first moment no more than one
another's faces--a memory to last them all their days.
"They're hailing us," the captain said with bitter mouth.
"_Who_ is hailing us?" The idea of rescue was still in the forefront of
his mind.
"Submarine."
How the captain knew, Newcomb had no idea. But certainly the
insignificant, low-pitched shadow--obscure mother of the light-ray ...
she was moving! And she was moving in the direction of the _Leyden's_
grave.
A voice came from her at last, uttering not the German they thought to
hear, but words yet more unfamiliar.
"He says," interrupted the Dutch captain, "we're to come 'longside."
"Shall we?" The chief engineer still could conceive orders as coming
only from the autocrat of the ship at the bottom of the sea.
"No choice." The captain's voice sank lower on an oath. He leaned
forward, and conferred with the men at the bow. Newcomb had noticed that
the captain still wore the coat of the captain of the watch, and he saw
now that when the grizzled head that had been bent in conference with
the engineer, was lifted, it wore a landsman's cap--a checked
deerstalker.
Clearly the engineer had been placed in command of this little
expedition over the intervening blackness to learn their fate--a
blackness that seemed to open to the long ray of the flash-light. To the
unnautical mind, the shortened ray seemed to draw the lifeboat in and
in, till the conning-tower stood clear to the straining eye; in and in,
till to the right of the main origin of light dim figures took shape; in
and in, till just before the oarsmen had brought the lifeboat alongside
the shelving body, topped with its low deck, suddenly the light ray was
extinguished. Lifeboat and submarine swung an instant in an equal
blackness. Out of it a voice, again in those strange accents. No answer
till an English tongue spoke from the lifeboat, "We can understand a
little German."
And then, just as eyes were beginning to grow accustomed to the dark,
which, after all, was darkness only by comparison, the compact figure
standing out on the conning-tower against the star-sown sky turned on
the light of an electric torch he held in his hand. He trailed the
sudden radiance along the lifeboat, raking her fore and aft. The light
lingered an instant at the stern. But the question he asked was: "Name
of your ship?"
He was told.
"Dutch?"
Holland-American, she was.
"Tonnage?"
"That was given, too."
"Are you the captain?"
"No. Chief Engineer Van Zandt."
An order was issued in German, and the interrogatory went on:
"Where _is_ the captain?"
"Hard to say," some one answered gruffly.
"He's where a British captain can usually be found," said another.
"In these days that 'usually' means at the bottom," retorted the
commander of the submarine. "Have you got any papers?"
"_Papers?_"
"Yes, yes, _Dummheit_; where are the ship's papers?"
"We'd better ask you," retorted a voice at the stern.
"You'd better keep the tongue civil!" came sharply back, with the first
betrayal of flaw in the perfect English.
Two figures coming up on the conning-tower brought with them the
diffused light of some open hatchway as they took their stand behind the
commander. He showed clearly now, a firm, square-built presence, a
beardless round face above the muffler. He said something over his
shoulder, and one of the two men just come up, stepped briskly to the
commander's side. During those few seconds it seemed mere chance that
the torch still lit up the stern of the lifeboat--lit the small, white
face with its parted lips and shining eyes, a face so destitute of fear,
so charged with sheer burning curiosity, that any sane person might be
forgiven for staring hard at what could only be a crass incapacity on a
girl's part to comprehend the situation.
"How many boats did you launch?" the brusk voice went on with the
catechism.
The engineer decided to say eight.
"That all? Why didn't you launch more?"
"No time."
"No _time_! That shows you're lying." He turned again and conferred with
the little group behind him.
"_Ja, ja--auch meine Meinung._" He wheeled round. "All right," he
called out; "shove off!"
Nobody in the lifeboat moved.
Grant's voice was heard for the first time after the second of stark
silence:
"What are you going to do with the people in this boat?"
"Finished with you. Shove off!"
That loosed tongues. The boat was full of angry voices. Grant's alone,
steady, quiet, but heard above them all, said:
"It's a mistake, then?--Wait a moment!"--he rose and steadied himself in
the gentle swell--"I say!--it's a mistake, then, that we're a hundred
miles from land?"
"Not much mistake about _that_," the voice came back.
"Are we to wait while you overhaul the other boats?"
"Why should you wait?"
"You mean to round the others up and give us a tow?"
"Oh, do I?"
Again the commander repeated that action of his, tilting the torch so as
to show up the pale oval with the eager eyes.
Newcomb readily owned afterward that the sharp collision of emotions in
those minutes during the interview put out of the question any sober
thinking or coordination of impressions. All that came later. But in the
flux of feeling he knew even at the time that his peculiar loathing of
the man wasn't altogether due to the devilish work he had finished, or
fear of what was yet to come. Even in the thick of shifting dreads and
hates Newcomb knew that moment by moment, ever since the colloquy began
in the background of his torn mind, a consciousness was shaping which
told him that this man would have cut the parting shorter but for some
special stimulation of his contemptuous interest in the lifeboat. And to
what could such stimulation be due but to the spectacle (Newcomb
admitted its crowning strangeness) of the way in which one person in the
boat was taking what most would count a catastrophe to shake the soul.
Did the fact of the absence of hatred in the face of the only woman in
the boat account for the something which Newcomb had little expected to
find in a German U-boat captain--that slight tendency to attitudinize in
the midst of his grim business, to assume the "gallant commander" air,
as no man does in exactly the same way for his fellowmen. This ghastly
suggestion of flirtatiousness, following hard as it did on the heels of
murder, and making its obscure demand over the very grave of the sunken
ship, stirred Newcomb to a pitch of fury hardly sane. And how the
thought flashed through him--how was Grant taking this girl's mockery of
him, mockery of all her protectors, of decency itself? And behold Grant
was "taking it"--this thing done on the floor of ocean--as a man may
whose head is among the stars. Poor devil! he didn't even see it, didn't
even sense what the commander's insolent use of the torch showed in that
circumscribed field of intense light--the girl's eyes still wide and
curious.
Instead of natural loathing, of every form of moral condemnation, she
was staring at the submarine commander with breathless interest, with an
eagerness that might flatter any man alive.
Grant had made his way down the lifeboat, holding to this one's
shoulder, steadying himself by that one's arm, his face drawn with
anxiety, but for all that a figure of hope, of conciliation.
"I say," he called out, "we haven't got any provisions in this boat, and
we're--you know how far we are from land."
"Bad management," commented the German, his eyes slipping past Grant
again to the face at the stern.
"Even if it is bad management, you're not going to abandon eighteen
fellow-beings in an open boat in mid-Atlantic, not _civilians_, to die
of starvation?"
That didn't seem to deserve an answer.
"Who's in charge of your boat?" was the curt demand.
Grant hesitated.
"I am," answered Van Zandt.
"Well, don't you know how to shove off when you're told to?"
"Stop!" Julian flung up an arm. "It's an impossible barbarity! Look!" He
swung round. "You haven't seen--there's a lady in the boat!"
"Oh, is there?" The flash of white teeth showed in that diffused light
spreading upward from the hatch. "The lady has only herself to blame."
"To blame? How is she to blame?"
"She disobeys the order."
"What order?" Grant couldn't yet see he had nothing to hope from the
man. "You _can't_ abandon us," he hurried on, "not a woman, anyway, to
the torture of slow starvation."
"I'm not sure that I can." The captain's hand had gone up as though to
stroke the absent mustache. When the hand came down, it showed his teeth
again as he half turned toward the men behind him.
At those words, "I'm not sure that I can," the reaction in the lifeboat
was so great that, with the snapping of the tension, Grant had wavered
dizzily, and Nan sprang up with a cry--a cry that Newcomb took for
relief till he saw her gesture toward Julian Grant. But nearer hands
laid hold on him as he called out in hoarse triumph, "What did I tell
you fellows!" and fell into the place they made for him. The commander
turned from some humorous interchange with his officers.
"Yes, it's a fact, I can't bring myself to abandon the lady." He took up
that position again near the edge of the conning-tower. With heels
together he made a sharp inclination from the hips. "I have a cabin
below, not luxurious, but more comfortable than--" he broke off with a
curt gesture. "I place it at the lady's disposal."
[Illustration: "I have a cabin below. I place it at the lady's
disposal"]
On the lifeboat for those first seconds a silence of petrification
reigned. On the submarine sounded voices--voices which hadn't been heard
before. For one sick instant Newcomb tried to fit those sounds to
expostulation, to revolt. And then hope died, transfixed by laughter.
But the commander himself was grave, almost decorous.
"Well, what do you say?" He was looking straight at the girl. "You must
make up your mind quickly. I've wasted too much time already."
"Far too much," burst from a man's throat down below.
"Unless," the German went on calmly--"unless, as seems probable, the
lady hasn't understood."
No wonder that he so interpreted the lady's face, for in the
circumscribed field of intense light her eyes showed wide to an
incredible vision. "It is true what your own people have told you," he
went on. "To stay where you are means death."
She spoke directly to him for the first time.
"And these--these others!"
"The fate of men in war," said the commander. "There is no need for you
to share it."
Only the rushing sound of the water for a breath's interval till she
gave him the measure of her incorrigible hope. "You'll save the others,
too!"
He checked his impatient gesture to demand: "You think they won't let
you come--alone!" No wonder he persisted, for she was looking at him
still with that excited hopefulness, though dashed now with
bewilderment, her brows drawn together as though she were trying with
all her might and main, in spite of dazzle and glare, to make out
something dim and far and inconceivably precious--nothing less than an
ultimate fate in man.
"I give you my word," he called out, "nobody shall prevent you."
"Yes, somebody will!" Julian shouted.
Twice fifteen hands were ready to make the assurance good. Four of them
were laid to the oars. It was all over while you'd count half a dozen,
but out of those flying seconds of half-paralyzed effort Newcomb kept
the memory of a lifeboat that seemed to share the mortal agitations of
her crew; a boat that for an instant--an eternity--swung under unequal
oar-strokes in an oily glitter that swelled up black, polished, till it
shut out the horizon stars.
As though no man had stirred, the _Leyden_ captain was roaring: "What
are you about? _Shove off!_" His voice thickened to incoherent cursing
even before a couple of boat-hook heads crashed down on the gunwale and
hauled the boat sharply back against the body of the submarine.
"Are you mad?" It wasn't lost on any one in the lifeboat that the
German's free hand had found his pistol as he added: "Isn't there sense
enough among you to know you're helpless? You've only the girl to thank
that I don't ram you to hell." A word over his shoulder sent two of the
crew down through that faint gush of light to the deck. "I'm sending for
you."
"_Julian!_" After the guttural male voice, the high childish cry seemed
to tear the quivering night in two.
Strangely it was answered. The pacifist Julian turned and flung himself
upon the man at his side. He seemed to grapple insanely with the
_Leyden_ captain, till something in his keeping was torn out of his
hand. Over their heads a shot rang out. Two sailors, about to board the
lifeboat, hesitated, turned and vanished.
Newcomb was for the moment so sure it was the U-boat commander who had
fired that his next impression was of a thing purely fantastic; for the
figure up there against the stars, that figure inclined in a mockery of
courtesy to Nan Ellis, jumped to attention; held the attitude rigidly an
instant, and then, as though in pride of pose he had overreached
himself, fell back. Men sprang to catch him and darkness closed round
the dropped torch.
Out of the half-crazed confusion that followed, it was hard afterward to
recall anything with both certainty and distinctness except the
captain's rough order to Julian, "Here, give it back!" and a pistol
changed hands. Newcomb had his share in wrenching the boat-hooks from
their hold and in the feverish self-defeating activity of the oarsmen.
Out of the semi-darkness on the submarine torches spouted light. Out of
the turmoil on conning-tower and deck, cries of fury crystallized to a
single sentence repeated in German by a dozen tongues, "Axes! Axes!
Stave her in!"
The first lieutenant gesticulated madly.
"Stop rowing _instantly_, or I fire!"
"Row! Row hard! For God's sake," Grant's voice prayed, "give me an oar!"
No one heeded; the rowers rowed for their lives. Two revolver-shots rang
out, and the chief engineer rowed no more.
Instead of pursuing, the submarine had darted away. She was swinging
half round a circle; she was, God in heaven! what now? She was heading
this way again, coming at full speed.
Newcomb brought his eyes back to the faces nearest him. They showed him
only that his own sick sense of helplessness was shared, and shared the
remembrance of that threat, but for the girl. To ram the lifeboat? As
easy as for a child to stick the end of a spoon through the breakfast
egg.
On she came; you heard the mutter of her engines. He couldn't bring
himself to look at the girl. For fear of meeting her eyes with knowledge
in them at last Newcomb found himself turning dizzily away from all
those stricken faces. In the teeth of death he remembered staring round
the black half-circle of the heavens.
The very cloud-wrack was seized by fear ... it ran scudding away from
the scene. It left naked the shivering stars. Two little sounds alone in
all that silence: a sobbing of water against the sides of the boat; and
that other, the low mutter of the oncoming doom.
In that final rush, the blackness in which the submarine moved, curled
up and fell away from her bow like black earth on either side of a
ploughshare--now like earth snow powdered.
That was the last thing Newcomb remembered--of the curling white lip of
the bow wave as the engine of death came rushing at the lifeboat. That
and voices in the extremity of horror that cried: "Jump! Jump!"
Those who didn't were not seen again.