The City of Comrades

by Basil King

Not more than a second later another Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! warned us that another shell was on the way; but before we had time to be afraid a soft P-ff! told us that this, too, had struck the water. The waterspout, this time on the starboard side, not only spattered us with spray, but made it clear that only the sharp shifting of the course had saved us from a hole in our bow. That within the next few minutes our enemy would get us somewhere was a little more than probable.

Then from every cluster of heads came the cry, “Oh, look!”

There she was—a blue-gray streak, only a little darker than the blue-gray waters. The change in our course revealed her as she lay on the surface to shell us, since she was too far away to send us a torpedo. We forgot everything—Regina Barry and I forgot each other—to gaze. My arms relaxed their hold on the girl because there was no longer a mind to direct them; the girl took command of herself because it was only thus that she could observe the most baleful and fascinating monster in the world.

For it was as a monster, baleful and fascinating, that we regarded her. She was not a thing planned by men’s brains and built in a shipyard. She was an abnormal, unscrupulous, venomous water beast, with a special enmity toward man. She had about her the horror of the trackless, the deep, the solitary, the lonesome, the devilish. Few of us had ever got a glimpse of her before. It was like Saint George’s first sight of the dragon that wasted men and cities, and called forth his hatred and his sword.

I think that sheer hatred was the cause of our banging away at her with our two guns. We could hardly expect to hit her. She must have been out of our range, and our only hope was in getting out of hers.

As far as we could judge she was lying still and shelling us at her ease. Splash! Splash! Splash! The screeching things went all round us; but by some miracle they were only spectacular.

Viewed as a spectacle, there was a terrific beauty in it all. Nature and man were raging together, ferociously, magnificently, without conscience, without quarter, without remorse. Hell had unsealed its springs even in us who stood watchful and inactive. There was a sense of abhorrent glory in the knowledge that there were no limits to which we would not go. That there were no limits to which our enemy would not go with us was stimulating, quickening, like the flicker of the whip to the racer. About and above us were all the elements of which man is most accustomed to be afraid, but which, now that we were among them, inspired an appalling glee.

It was amazing how quickly we got used to it, just as, I am told, a man after a night or two gets used to being in the death-house. To be shelled on a stormy, lonely ocean came within a few minutes to being a matter of course. Had we had time to reflect and look backward, it would have seemed strange to think that we had made voyages across the Atlantic in which we had not been shelled.

Then all of a sudden there was a noise like that in a house when it is struck by lightning. It was as if all creation had burst into sound, as if there were nothing anywhere that was not a concomitant of an ear-splitting, soul-splitting crash. It was over us; it was round us; it was everywhere; it might have been within us. In our own persons we seemed to be rent by it.

From the port side a blast of smoke rose and poisoned the dark air. A few shrieks, half suppressed by the shriekers, ran the length of the deck, and a few male exclamations of astonishment and awe. For the most part, however, we stood still and soundless, as I believe we should have held ourselves had it proved to be the Judgment Day.