"'The captain seemed kind of excited and showed me the medal he got for sinking the Lusitania; and I asked him if the Kaiser gave it to him for a Christmas present. That was when he and another officer seemed to go mad; and the officer gave me a blow on the head with a piece of iron.
"'They say I'm crazy,' he says, 'but it was the men on the "U" boat that went crazy. I was lying where I fell, with the blood running down my face, but I was watching them,' he says, 'and I saw them start and listen like trapped weasels. At first I thought the trawlers had got 'em in a net. Then I heard a funny little tapping sound all round the hull of the submarine, like little soft hands it was, tapping, tapping, tapping.
"'The captain went white as a ghost, and shouted out something in German, like as if he was calling "Who's there?" and the mate clapped his hand over his mouth, and they both stood staring at one another.
"'Then there was a sound like a thin little voice, outside the ship, mark you, and sixty fathom deep, saying, "Christmas Eve, the Waits, sir!" The captain tore the mate's hand away and shouted again, like he was asking "Who's there!" and wild to get an answer, too. Then, very thin and clear, the little voice came a second time, "The Waits, sir. The Lusitania, ladies!" And at that the captain struck the mate in the face with his clenched fist. He had the medal in it still between his fingers, using it like a knuckle-duster. Then he called to the men like a madman, all in German, but I knew he was telling 'em to rise to the surface, by the way they were trying to obey him.
"'The submarine never budged for all that they could do; and while they were running up and down and squealing out to one another, there was a kind of low sweet sound all round the hull, like a thousand voices all singing together in the sea:
"Fear not, said he, for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind.
Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind."
"'Then the tapping began again, but it was much louder now; and it seemed as if hundreds of drowned hands were feeling the hull and loosening bolts and pulling at hatchways; and—all at once—a trickle of water came splashing down into the cabin. The captain dropped his medal. It rolled up to my hand and I saw there was blood on it. He screamed at the men, and they pulled out their life-saving apparatus, a kind of air-tank which they strapped on their backs, with tubes to rubber masks for clapping over their mouths and noses. I watched 'em doing it, and managed to do the same. They were too busy to take any notice of me. Then they pulled a lever and tumbled out through a hole, and I followed 'em blindly. Something grabbed me when I got outside and held me for a minute. Then I saw 'em, Captain Kendrick, I saw 'em, hundreds and hundreds of 'em, in a shiny light, and sixty fathom down under the dark sea—they were all waiting there, men and women and poor little babies with hair like sunshine....
"'And the men were smiling at the Germans in a friendly way, and unstrapping the air-tanks from their backs, and saying, "Won't you come and join us? It's Christmas Eve, you know."
"'Then whatever it was that held me let me go, and I shot up and knew nothing till I found myself in Jack Simmonds's drifter, and they told me I was crazy.'"
Captain Kendrick filled his pipe. A great gust struck the old inn again and again till all the timbers trembled. The floundering step passed once more, and the hoarse voice bellowed away in the darkness against the bellowing sea: