Bernard saw it too and sighed. "It's the skipper's girl," he said. "Poor chap! he'll never see her again in this world! It was an ugly death to die, John!" and his voice had a note of deep feeling in it. "But it had to be, and Scarlett told me that he didn't know what hurt him.
"Now," he continued, "I'm going to show you something." He pulled out his watch and then, leaning over to the wall, he snapped over something like the stunted lever of a signal box. Then he pressed a button and a bell rang somewhere far down below. A hoarse voice sounded in our ears from a speaking-tube, and there was a quick, throbbing, pumping sound from the column in the wall.
Looking down, I saw that immediately below us was a circular white table. I put my hand on it and it was painted canvas, dazzlingly white.
"The periscope is going up," my brother said. "It should be light, now—watch!"
There was a click and the lamp in the roof went out. We were in darkness. A slight creaking sound, a movement of my brother's arm, and there flashed down, in clear light upon the table, a picture of the upper seas.
Forty feet above, the eye of the submarine surveyed the dawn, and in that still box where we stood, we saw it also.
Dawn upon the waters! A tossing grey expanse of waves. It was like the film of a cinematograph, only in colour, and as Bernard turned the wheel, picture after picture glided over the table—the most incredible thing!
Not a sail was in sight. The North Sea was an empty, tossing waste of waters in the cold light of the winter's dawn.
The dawn of—what?