Zenas Wright, who had looked unshaken on many strange things, looked upon this and cried out, even as had Everson:
"The color! A new color! Impossible; yet it is!"
With chaos and death linked together and roaring in front of him, the old man, true scientist to the last, bent his eyes on the flaming pillar in a challenging and analytical stare. If this was to be his final vision, why, he would learn what he might from it before he went into the shadow where all learning is valueless.
Like painted puppets carved from wood, the men and women on the deck stood and gazed at the appalling ruin of that fell disaster. It was only a moment in the happening, but a moment that bore the burden of many moments in its intensity.
The pillar of light moved, and those that watched saw that everything that it touched it destroyed. It swayed toward them, and the deck crumpled away before its advance. It swung back. In its path was one of the massive steel turrets of the cruiser. The light played against it. The turret tottered; the steel of it seemed to melt and disintegrate. The entire structure crumbled and crashed down, disappearing through the gash in the decking. With the fall of the turret the light vanished also.
From the companionway came the horrid remnant of a man who crossed the deck to Everson. One of his arms had been torn away between the wrist and elbow. His features were blackened and marred beyond recognition. An eye was gone. His clothing hung about him in tatters, and the tatters were burning. He halted in front of the lieutenant and raised the maimed arm, from which the blood was spurting, in the semblance of a salute.
"The ship—sinks. The—sea—on fire."
He croaked the words brokenly, and fell, and died at the feet of his commander.
Up through the gap in her bottom surged the sea water, and the ship began to settle. The Minnetonka was sinking.