Incredulously Lanyard pawed the body of the monster beneath him. His hands passed over a riveted joint of metal plates. Looking up, he made out the truncated cone of a conning tower with its antennae-like periscope tubes stencilled black upon the soft purple of the star-strewn sky.
Slowly the truth came home: a submarine had risen beneath him. He lay upon its after deck, grasping a stanchion that supported the small raised bridge round the conning tower.
He sobbed a little in sheer hysteric gratitude, that this miracle had been vouchsafed unto him, that he had thus been spared to live on against his hour with Ekstrom.
But when he sought to drag himself up to the bridge, he could not, he was too weak and faint. Ceasing to struggle, he rested in half stupour, panting.
With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back. Rousing, Lanyard saw several figures emerge from the conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless, shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above him, filling their lungs with the sweet air. He tried to call to them, but evoked a mere rattle from his throat.
Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immediately over him, fixing binoculars to their eyes, their voices quite audible.
A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he heard them conferring together in the German tongue.
Death, then, was but a little delayed.
Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon his senses he caught broken phrases, snatches of sentences: