"No choice." The captain's voice sank lower on an oath. He leaned forward, and conferred with the men at the bow. Newcomb had noticed that the captain still wore the coat of the captain of the watch, and he saw now that when the grizzled head that had been bent in conference with the engineer, was lifted, it wore a landsman's cap—a checked deerstalker.
Clearly the engineer had been placed in command of this little expedition over the intervening blackness to learn their fate—a blackness that seemed to open to the long ray of the flash-light. To the unnautical mind, the shortened ray seemed to draw the lifeboat in and in, till the conning-tower stood clear to the straining eye; in and in, till to the right of the main origin of light dim figures took shape; in and in, till just before the oarsmen had brought the lifeboat alongside the shelving body, topped with its low deck, suddenly the light ray was extinguished. Lifeboat and submarine swung an instant in an equal blackness. Out of it a voice, again in those strange accents. No answer till an English tongue spoke from the lifeboat, "We can understand a little German."
And then, just as eyes were beginning to grow accustomed to the dark, which, after all, was darkness only by comparison, the compact figure standing out on the conning-tower against the star-sown sky turned on the light of an electric torch he held in his hand. He trailed the sudden radiance along the lifeboat, raking her fore and aft. The light lingered an instant at the stern. But the question he asked was: "Name of your ship?"
He was told.
"Dutch?"
Holland-American, she was.
"Tonnage?"
"That was given, too."
"Are you the captain?"
"No. Chief Engineer Van Zandt."