Throughout the ship again, between the concussion of the striking shells and the firing of the Ribot’s guns, alarm gongs were going.
A woman screamed; men’s shouts came in answer. The rush of the Ribot through the water, which had been swift and steady since the start of the fight, suddenly swerved and the ship veered off to the right.
“What’s that?” Ruth said.
“We may be zigzagging to dodge torpedoes,” Gerry Hull said. “Or it may be that our helm is shot away and we can’t steer; or we may be changing course to charge a sub in close.”
A detonation closer than any before quite stunned Ruth for seconds or minutes or longer—she did not know. Only when she came to herself slowly, she was alone behind the sheet of steel. Gerry Hull was gone.
CHAPTER VII
“ONE OF OUR OWN!”
The deck floor just beyond her, where he had been, was gone; or rather—as she saw now through the smoke—it slanted steeply down like a chute into a chasm of indefinite depth from which the heavy, stifling smoke was pouring. A draft sucked the smoke out of the shattered side of the ship over the sea and gave Ruth cleaner air to breathe for seconds at a time. Gerry Hull must have been hurled into that chasm when that last detonation blew away the floor; or else he must have flung himself into the sea.
Ruth called his name, shouting first into the smoke column and then, creeping down to the shell hole in the side, she thrust her head out and gazed at the sea. Wreckage from the upper deck—wooden chairs, bits of canvas—swept backwards; she saw no one swimming. The splash of the waves dashed upon her, the ship was rushing onward, but not so swiftly as before, and with a distinct change in the thrust of the engines and with a strange sensation of strain on the ship. Only one engine was going, Ruth decided—the port engine; it was being forced faster and faster to do the work of both and the rudder was pulled against the swerve of the port screw to keep the vessel from swinging in a circle.
The guns on deck were firing steadily, it seemed; but the German submarine, which Ruth could see and which had begun to drop behind when the Ribot was racing with both engines, was drawing up abreast again with both its big rifles firing. But the Ribot’s guns, if they had not yet hit that U-boat, at least had driven her away; for, though she came up abreast, the German kept farther off than before; and while Ruth watched, she heard a sudden, wild cheer from the deck; French shells had gone home somewhere on that U-boat or upon the other which Ruth could not see.
Smoke continued to sweep by Ruth, engulfing her for long moments, but the fire was far enough below not to immediately threaten her. So for the minute she was as safe as she could be anywhere upon that long flank of the ship at which the U-boats were firing. At any instant, a shell might obliterate her; but she could not influence that by any thought or action of her own. So she thought no more about it. She could possibly influence the fate of Gerry Hull. He had been flung down that chute of the deck floor, she thought; the shell might have killed him; it might only have wounded or stunned him. In that case, he must be lying helpless down there where the flames were. She took long breaths of sea air and crept back and called again into the smoke; she thought she heard a man’s cry in response; Gerry Hull’s voice. She returned to the hole in the side of the ship and let the waves drench her face and her hair; she caught up her skirt and soaked it in the splash of the sea.