Part 12 (1/2)

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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.s 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate voices wailed their anguish to a pa.s.sive G.o.d; 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 s.h.i.+ver; 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 la.s.s 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, s.h.i.+vering.

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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sed 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!”