Ruth covered his face decently with the sheet; and, rising, she grasped the jagged edges of the hole blown by the German shell in the side of the ship; and she stared out it. A mile and a half away; two miles or more perhaps—she could not tell—but at any rate just where the fringe of the mist stopped sight, she saw a long, low shape scudding over the swell of the sea; puffs of haze of a different quality hung over it, cleared and hung again. Ruth understood that these were the gases from guns firing—the guns which had sent that shell which had slain in their beds the little Armenian missionary and his wife, the guns which were sending the shells now bursting aboard the Ribot further below and more astern. Ruth gazed at the U-boat aghast with fury—fury and loathing beyond any feeling which she could have imagined. She had supposed she had known full loathing when she learned of the first deeds done in Termonde and Louvain; then she had thought, when the Germans sank the Lusitania, that it was utterly impossible for her to detest fellow-men more than those responsible. But now she knew that any passion previously stirred within her was only the weak and vacuous reaction to a tale which was told. She had viewed her first dead slain by a fellow-man; and amazing, all overwhelming instincts—an urge to kill, kill in return, kill in punishment, kill in revenge—possessed her. She had not meant to kill before. She had thought of saving life—saving the Belgians from more barbarities, saving the lives of those at sea; she had thought of her task ahead, and of the risks she was to run, as saving the lives of American and British and French soldiers. For the first time she thought of herself as an instrument to kill—kill Germans, many, many Germans; all that she could.
Someone had come into the wreck of that cabin behind her now. A steward, probably; or perhaps Hubert Lennon, who had found her again. She did not turn but continued to stare at the U-boat, her hands clinging to the jagged hole made by its shell. A man’s hand caught her shoulder and a voice spoke to her—Gerry Hull’s voice.
“Come with me,” he was saying to her. “You cannot stay here; come to a safer place.”
“A safer place!” she repeated to him. “How can we help to kill them on that boat?” she cried to him.
He was undoing her fingers, by main strength, from their clutch at the jagged iron of the shell hole. He was very calm and quiet and strong; and he was controlling her as though she were a child.
“They’re four thousand yards off,” he said to her. “That one there and another on the other side. It’s just begun to fire.”
Some of the shells which had been striking, Ruth realized now, had burst on the other side of the Ribot.
“Yes,” she said.
“We’ve signaled we’re attacked,” he told her. He had both her hands free; and he bound her arms to her body with his arms. “We’ve an answer, and destroyers are coming. But they can’t get up before an hour or two; so we’ve a long fight on. You must come below.”
He was half carrying her, ignominiously; and it came to Ruth that, before seeking her, he had gone to Agnes Ertyle; but she had not delayed him because she was used to being under fire, used to seeing those slain by fellow-men; used to knowing what she could and could not do.