It was ten o’clock when he struck Jo’s Mills, as it was called—a tiny settlement slightly up a hill from the point where a gray old mill stood on the edge of a stream which took a long tumble here. There were a half dozen, comfortable, old-time, white houses on the street, with apple-trees and lilacs and gardens. There was a big general store—relic of early days when things were busy—only half occupied now—a church—a school—a post-office in the wing of Miss Sally Black’s house—a neat, prim post-office where nobody warmed his back long—though Miss Sally was not above keeping everybody long enough to feel out the news. There was a public telephone in the post-office, and over this it was the custom of the Sabinsport operators to communicate to Miss Sally anything particularly important. It was evident to Dick as he approached that Miss Sally must have received something that the neighbors were interested in, for there was a little group standing around, looking rather glum. He stopped and quite instinctively inquired, “What’s the news?”
“Well,” said one of the men—“it don’t sound good to me—mebbe ’tain’t so—they say the Germans have sunk a ship—a big one with a lot of Americans and women and children—didn’t give no notice—nothing—just sunk ’em.”
“Well—what I say is,” said another, “that ain’t likely. How could a submarine do that—sink a ship like that?—she’d have to blow up inside to sink so quickly. Likely her engine exploded.”
Dick didn’t stop to debate the power of the submarine, but quickly stepped in and called Ralph at the Argus office in Sabinsport.
“Hello, Ralph,” he said. “I’ve just walked into Jo’s Mills. There’s an ugly report here of the sinking of a vessel with big loss of Americans—anything in it?”
“Everything in it, the Lusitania was torpedoed yesterday—she sank in a few minutes. There is a loss of twelve hundred lives reported, one hundred of them Americans.”
“My God!” exclaimed Dick.
“Yes,” replied Ralph, savagely, “my God!” and both men hung up.
It was but five miles into Sabinsport, but Dick always thought of it as the longest and blackest five miles he ever walked. As one drew nearer the town, the valley and the river unfolded, giving glimpses of rare loveliness, but they were lost on him now, though he had been looking forward to them all the morning as a delightful finish to his tramp. The tormented world was again on his back—his mind was grappling with the awful possibilities in the news. This was no ordinary casualty of war—not a battle lost or won. This was not war, as war was understood. It was a new factor in the awful problem. It was something quite outside the code—a deliberate effort to scare the neutral world into giving up the sea code it had been working out with such pain through the ages—scaring them into admitting that atrocities it thought it had done away with were legitimate if you invented an engine of destruction which couldn’t be used unless you abandoned the laws. It was a defiance not only of all codes, but a most impudent defiance of the stern warning of the United States. Dick’s blood ran hot and furious as he thought of it. “It can’t be passed. It means action. They’ll have to retreat—or we’ll have to fight—and they’ll never retreat. It would be giving up half of what they think their strength,” he said, with the conviction of one who knew his Germany—its confidence in itself, its contempt for non-military peoples, its sneering at all laws or practices that stood in the way of its will.
“But who, who in Sabinsport sees this as it is? How are they to be made to see it? Half the town will treat the Lusitania as a tragedy like the Titanic. Captain Billy will rave and say, ‘If we had protested—if we hadn’t a Democratic administration.’ But that isn’t seeing the issue—his kind of fury against the Germans misses the point—the inner meaning which the country must see if it ever goes whole-heartedly in. Wanton piracy—as savage and unmerciful as the Wotan they worship. God! if I could get into it. But here I stay. I will go home—bathe—dress—read my mail—prepare for services to-morrow—go through them. I’ll sleep and eat and write and smile and talk as if this fearful thing was not on the earth—as if I didn’t know that every day brought it closer to Sabinsport—and she doesn’t know it. Ralph’s right—it’s closing in on us. And what will Ralph say, I wonder.”