“You’re safe!” he cried out to her with mighty relief. He had pulled trousers and coat over his pajamas; he had shoes, unlaced, upon his bare feet. He was without his glasses and his nearsighted eyes blinked big and blankly; he had on a life-jacket, of the sort under all berths; but he bore in his hands a complete life-suit with big boots into which one stepped and which had a bag top to go up about the neck.
“Put this on!” he thrust it at Ruth.
“We’re not sinking,” she replied. “Oh, thank you; thank you—but we aren’t torpedoed—not yet. They’re just firing and we’re fighting—” indeed she was shouting to be heard after the noise of their guns—“we must have people hurt.”
“We’ve a lot—a lot hurt,” Hubert said.
Other shells were striking the ship; and Ruth went by him into a passage confused with smoke and stumbly from things strewn under her feet; a cabin door hung open and beyond the door, the side of the ship gaped suddenly to the sea. The sides of the gap were jagged and split and splintered wood; a ripped mattress, bedding, a man’s coat and shirt, a woman’s clothing lay strewn all about; the bedding smouldered and from under it a hand projected—a man’s hand. It clasped and opened convulsively; Ruth stopped and grasped the hand; it caught hers very tight and, still holding and held by it, Ruth with her other hand cleared the bedding from off the man’s face. She recognized him at once; he was an oldish, gentle but fearless little man—an American who had been a missionary in Turkey; he and his wife, who had worked with him, had been to America to raise money for Armenian relief and had been on their way back together to their perilous post.
“Mattie?” the little man was asking anxiously of Ruth as he looked up at her. “Mattie?”
Mattie, Ruth knew, must have been his wife; and she turned back the bedding beyond him.
“She’s gone,” Ruth told him, mercifully thrusting him back as he tried to turn about. “She’s gone where you are going.”
The little missionary’s eyes closed. “The order for all moneys is in my pocket. Luke VI, 27,” his lips murmured. “Luke VI, 27 and 35.”
The hand which again was holding Ruth’s and which had been so strong the instant before, was quiet now. “The sixth chapter of the gospel according to St. Luke and the twenty-seventh verse,” the little man’s voice murmured, “But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies.”