CHAPTER VII
The first officer of theBelle o' Perthhad already signaled for the captain. The latter came running, and a wave of excitement spread through the ship.
The passengers on deck crowded to the rail at which Belinda Melnotte and her party were already standing. There was no outcry, and the crew went about their duties, but like magic an armed officer appeared beside each boat, while the wireless began to crackle overhead.
Bell-signals rang back and forth between the quarter-deck and the engine room. One man appeared on deck with a life preserver strapped under his arms. At that, a woman shrieked and was borne below, sobbing. But there was no panic.
Indeed, a solemn silence seemed to brood over the ship and her company. The revolutions of the screws had been immediately increased. The ship was plowing through the sea swiftly; but the wavering, pipe-like periscope was coming up on a slant. Although the submarine was not speedy enough to cross the steamship's bows, she would soon be able to strike.
Aunt Roberta sank into a chair and put her hands over her eyes; but she made no murmur or complaint. Belinda and Sanderson stood together at the rail. Captain Dexter had suddenly departed.
The girl swept the arc of the horizon as far as she could see with her gaze. Ahead and to the eastward lay a fogbank. She wondered if the officers on the steamship's quarter-deck saw this. She placed a tentative hand upon Frank Sanderson's arm.
"See!" she whispered, pointing.
He turned the glasses forward and nodded. Then he suddenly dropped them and gazed directly into her excited face.
"Why," he murmured, "you are not frightened, Miss Melnotte."
"I—I do not know whether I am or not," she confessed. "But if that awful boat reaches us——"
"She is going to be within gunfire in a minute," he declared. "We are trying to escape. That constitutes a crime in the eyes of the Teuton. She will send us a shell, at least."
"Perhaps she will not hit us."
"You have a poorer opinion of German efficiency than I have," he returned dryly. "I am glad it has come in the daytime. If you have valuables in your stateroom—you and your aunt—you had better secure them."
"Oh!"
"We may be in the boats in ten minutes."
She still clung to his arm, looking deep into his eyes as he spoke. There was something in their steady fire that thrilled her. She knew she gazed into the eyes of a man who was perfectly fearless of spirit.
"'The look of eagles,'" was her unspoken thought.
"Do you hear me, Miss Melnotte—Belinda?"
She started and the color swept into her throat and face. His tender tone could not be mistaken. His desire to aid and sustain her savored of a thought she had determined to shut away from her mind and heart.
And yet, in this intimate moment, with death advancing upon them, was it wrong to show him a little, just a breath, of her real concern? Her hand slipped down his coatsleeve with a caressing gesture and lay for a moment trembling in his own. Frank Sanderson thought, as his hand closed over it, that it was like the body of a bird fallen from its nest that he had once picked up by the roadside. He could feel her fluttering heartbeats in the pulse of it.
They continued to gaze into each other's eyes for a long moment.
Above on the quarter-deck rose the sharp voice of Captain Raphael Dexter.
"Isn't no different, as I can see, from bein' chased by a mad whale. And that's happened to me twice. A whale can only hit head on, and yonder dogfish can only shoot straight ahead. Am I right?"
"Quite true, Captain Dexter," quietly agreed the ship's commander, recognizing the old shipmaster's wisdom and experience.
"Then run your ship zigzag," pronounced the Yankee skipper. "Run for the fog yonder, but keep a-changin' your course—that's the caper!" he added as the captain telegraphed the change to the wheel-house.
The ship bore off suddenly. Instantly a shrieking shell rose from the submarine, which was now awash, and, describing a parabola, dropped just beyond the steamship's stern.
It was an unmistakable command to "Stop!"
A murmur rose from the watching passengers along the rail. Groups of the crew had gathered on the lower deck to view the submarine. There were a number of the stokers off duty. Suddenly, from their midst, rang out a startling, terrifying appeal:
"She'll sink us!Stop the ship!"
The eager, blazing face of Captain Raphael Dexter appeared at the break of the quarter-deck. Forgetting he was not on his own ship, he bellowed:
"Shut that man's mouth! Gag the poor fool! What are we—men or mice?"
"We'remen—that's what we are, Skipper!" shouted Frank Sanderson, suddenly grinning up into the face of the old shipmaster.
An appreciative, if uncertain, laugh was raised among the passengers and crew within hearing. The commander of theBelle o' Perthhad now taken a confident stand. Captain Dexter apologized for his display of excitement and retreated from the quarter-deck, where fraternal courtesy only had allowed him.
A second shell from the submarine exploded within half a cable's length. The great ship swerved sharply, the sea boiling under her bows. She swung in a great arc and it looked as though she would end by being driven directly upon the U-boat.
The commander of the undersea craft evidently thought this was the intention. Although the submarine was not then in a perfect position for such an attempt, a torpedo was launched—an act not at all unpermissible, as the craft attacked refused to halt.
Belinda Melnotte and Frank Sanderson, now hanging over the rail, saw the white streak of the torpedo in the sea. Other passengers had run below to secure their valuables and to put on life preservers. But the Red Cross recruit had refused to go; and Aunt Roberta was a fatalist.
Belinda realized that the aviator again held her hand. She did not seek to withdraw it. Their mutual gaze was fixed on the deadly missile shot from the torpedo tube of the U-boat. Another moment——
Tendrils of fog were wafted across Belinda's cheek. She glanced around, startled. The high bows of theBelle o' Perthwere already parting the fogbank. That was why the commander had shifted his helm so quickly.
The great steamship swept grandly past the ugly undersea boat. The fog closed softly about theBelle o' Perthand hid her. The ship's course was changed for a third time and at once she was out of the zone of danger. The less speedy submarine could neither overtake her before she entered the fog, nor discover the liner once the mist had closed about her.
But something had happened in these minutes of anxiety to both Belinda and Frank Sanderson. They turned, when the ugly craft was out of sight, to look once more into each other's countenances.
The nurse remembered suddenly about that other woman and "the kiddies." Sanderson thought of his brother's warning: "A man in your position has no business to try to tie up any woman's affections."
He released her hand and the lowered lashes hid from him the light that shone in Belinda's eyes.
"Mon Dieu!" said Aunt Roberta, aroused from her stupor, "if once we arrive in that so dear France, never will I step foot upon the sea again—non!"
"Pshaw!" interjected Captain Dexter, rejoining, them at this moment. "You mustn't mind a little thing like a submarine. Anyway, when the war is over, the sea will be perfectly safe."
"Merci, Monsieur!" gasped Aunt Roberta. "Can the dreadful ocean beeversafe?"
"Why not?" demanded Captain Dexter stoutly. "Jack was probably right when he said in a living gale: 'God help the poor folks ashore to-night!' On shipboard you don't have to worry about chimney bricks or roof tiles blowin' off in a bit of a gale and knockin' you down. There's lots of accidents that happen ashore that couldn't possibly ketch you on board ship."
"Like being run down by an automobile," chuckled Sanderson.
"Or fallin' out of one of your pesky airships," retorted the Yankee shipmaster. "By Hannah! I've sailed the seas for sixty years—and look at me. Ain't never been killed yet."
"Ah,le capitaine," murmured the little Frenchwoman, "is so brave! But poor weak womankind must tremble at such awful events as this that has just happened. Ah! those terrible Germans! They are sea-tigers!"
"I'd liked to have had the management of this ship for ten minutes," grumbled the Yankee shipmaster. "I believe I could have run that dogfish under. At any rate I'd have tried to."
"Oh, Captain Dexter!" ejaculated Belinda, in horror. "You would have sunk her with all her crew?"
"Well, I don't see how I could have saved 'em," responded the captain, with some disgust. "They'd have sunk us quick enough."
"But you say yourself they are only obeying orders!" she exclaimed spiritedly.
"Ha! And I'm afraid my hand would have obeyed the orders of my brain without much compunction," concluded the captain grimly.
The incident colored the entire voyage in the memory of all. Belinda's remembrance of it was bound to be a painful one.
This was not alone because of the submarine chase. Continually in her thought was the vision of the way Frank Sanderson had looked at her—the little he had said—the pressure of his hand.
Had she given him further opportunity, would he have spoken the word that was the master key to her heart?
She trembled at the thought. Yet, there was that other woman—the kiddies——
She half hated him! She wholly loved him! They landed, and she and Aunt Roberta journeyed slowly to Paris without Sanderson's having been given the opportunity to speak again to Belinda in private.