“I’ll go where—I should,” Ruth promised, looking up at him; and he released her.
He pointed her toward a companionway where steps had led downward a few minutes before; but now they were broken and smoke at that moment was beginning to pour up. He turned and led her off to the right; but a shell struck before them there and hurled them back with the shock of its detonation. It skewed around a sheet of steel which had been a partition wall between two cabins; it blew down doors and strewed débris of all sorts down upon them. Another shell, striking aft, choked and closed escape in the other direction. Gerry Hull threw himself against the sheet of thin steel which the shell so swiftly and easily had spread over the passage; but all his strength could not budge it. He turned back to Ruth and looked her over.
“All right?” he asked her.
“You are too?”
He turned from her and gazed through the side of the ship. “They’ve got our range pretty well, I should say. They’re still firing both their guns, and we don’t seem to be hitting much.”
He tried again to bend back the sheet of steel which penned them in the passage, but with effort as vain as before.
“I guess we stay here for a while,” he said when he desisted. “If we don’t get help and it looks like we’re going to sink, we can always dive through there into the sea.”
A shell smashed in below and a few rods forward and burst with terrific detonation.
“Huns seem to like this part of the ship,” he said when the shock was past.
“That started something burning just below,” Ruth said.