Then Stevens felt his senses failing him, sank backward and was but dimly conscious of the waters outside the submarine roaring wildly as it shot upward with terrific speed. For a time that seemed endless to his darkened mind that roaring continued, and then abruptly came silence, and a great shock and splash. Then he felt hands upon him, and hoarse voices shouting in his ears, heard the doors above clanging open, admitting a flood of sunlight and clean fresh air upon him, and then he knew no more.
6
Sunset was flaming red in the west once more when Clinton and Stevens stood together again on the submarine's narrow deck, watching the preparations for its homeward voyage. Behind it floated a bare dozen of other long steel craft, as scarred and battered as itself, flung up and saved like itself by that last great convulsion of the waters—a dozen only, the last remnant of the mighty fleet of hundreds that had dived to the attack a scant few hours before. Even as they watched, three of those craft were moving away on their own homeward journey, toward the west, toward the sunset, over the waters that were now miraculously calmed and smoothened. Their last rejoicing farewells came faintly over those waters as they went, and then they were passing from sight, dark blots against the brilliance of the western sky, dwindling and vanishing.
There came into the minds of both men, as they gazed across the peaceful waters, a wonder as to what frantic outbursts of joy were shaking the peoples of earth to see those waters calmed thus, to see their terrible rise thus halted. There came into their minds a vision of what might have been, of the seas that might have whelmed a planet, with a strange and terrible race triumphant and supreme upon it, and then one of what would be, when the hordes of fugitives, half hoping, half doubting, would creep back from their hills and mountains of refuge toward their deserted lands and cities, when the places that were silent now and dead would be ringing again with life, when all the terror that had riven earth would be but a thing of the remembered past.
Then these things slipped from the minds of both and they turned toward the east as their craft, and those behind it, moved away in that direction. Onward through the waters they moved, their propellers turning faster and faster, little waves breaking from either side of their prows as they clove the sea. The brilliance faded from the sky behind the two men, as the little fleet moved on, and the gathering night closed down upon the world, star-embroidered. But the two standing there alone on the little vessel's deck were silent still, and unmoving, gazing out into the darkness across the calm waters with the silence of men whose minds held things too great for speech.