The sun, at last, was setting. Darkness was spreading from the east; and at the same time, a lowering mass of cloud was drifting forward on the wind which presently would shut out the starlight and the moon.
There is no situation more terrible, there is nothing that requires greater fortitude to bear, than to find oneself doomed and deserted upon the unutterable loneliness of the sea, as the sun sinks in the sky and the mists of twilight glide upon the surface of the waters. There was no help for it; they knew that they must die. At such an hour, it was but human nature that their thoughts should turn to the God Who had given them life. Each man closed his eyes; and standing together, clinging to the last of the sinking ship, one and all prayed silently and swiftly that death might be easy, and that the wrong they had done in their lives should be forgiven.
And then, as if to make their lot more hard, the cruelty of their end more bitter, within a hundred feet of the fishing-smack, silhouetted against the red glow of a winter's sunset, there arose from out of the water, the shark-like, threatening form of the U93.
AS THEY SANK OUT OF THE RED GLARE OF A WINTER'S SUNSET THERE APPEARED THE THREATENING FORM OF THE U93.
[CHAPTER XXIII--The Loss of the "Kitty McQuaire"]
The submarine had made its appearance quite suddenly, rising in silence to the surface of the water, where the waves broke against the superstructure, which was presently the centre of a white circle of foam. A little afterwards, the figures of two men appeared upon the conning-tower, one of whom Jimmy Burke recognized immediately as the German officer who had hailed the "Harlech," and whom he had followed to the engine-room of the deserted ship.
There was something almost uncanny in the thought that this dreaded submarine monster had travelled northward all the way from the Lizard, evading the Allied destroyers which thronged the Channel and the Straits of Dover, steering amid the shoals and shallows of the Goodwin Sands, passing under water in all probability often within a stone's throw of His Majesty's ships guarding the shores of England.
Of all craft that put to sea, the modern submarine is the most formidable, inasmuch as it seems gifted with an intelligence of its own. It is an invention so highly organized and delicately equipped, its capabilities are so marvellous, its possibilities so great, that it is not difficult to imagine it even possessed of a kind of consciousness of its own. As a matter of fact, it is no more than a perfectly complete machine which--after the manner of all machinery--answers to the will of its commander. When that commander is ruthless and pitiless, when his orders are to wage war upon innocent men, women and children, to show neither gallantry nor clemency to whomsoever may fall into his clutches, then a submarine--such as the U93--becomes the shark, the ship of prey, among the navies of the world.
The "Kitty McQuaire" was sinking fast by the bows. In the red sunset--the last of a dying day--she had not ten minutes in which to live; and yet, faced with such a tragedy, with the spectacle of so many men so indubitably doomed, the commander of the U93 threw back his head, and laughed.