But the production of a bundle of elastic-sided foot-coverings of unmistakably feminine proportions reduced even the Captain to silence; and a pair of little clump-soled shoes brandished in a gaunt and grimy hand, put a clincher on the case.
“Who says they’re not child’s sizes now?” shouted the owner of the grimy hand hoarsely. “Are these men’s boots? Maybe you’ll look and say!” He added: “And may the feet o’ them that has palmed ’em off on us march naked over Hell’s red-hot floor, come the Day o’ Judgment! If there’s a God in Heaven, He’ll grant that prayer!”
He threw down the little hobnailed shoes, and went over, muttering, and scowling, and staggering in his gait, to where the stark body of a long-booted navvy lay in the shadow of a pyramid of Commissariat crates.
His comrades and officers and Mortimer Jowell watched in silence, as he sat himself down opposite the dead man, and measured the soles of his feet against the rigid feet. They were of a size. He nodded at the livid blue face of their late owner, and said grimly:
“You and me, matey, seem about the same size in corn-boxes. Maybe you’ll not grudge to part with your boots to a covey who’ll be in your shoes next week or to-night!”
Mortimer Jowell sickened as the ghastly process of removal was completed, but the ugly fascination of the scene held him as it did other men. Nobody had noticed the blue haze creeping in from the sea, pushed by a wind that had veered suddenly. As the soldier stood up in the dead navvy’s boots, the gale yelled, and broke....
XCVII
It came from the southwest with hail and blizzards of snow in it. Tents scattered at its breath like autumn leaves—iron roofs of Army store-sheds took wing like flights of frightened rooks. Thunder cracked and rolled incessantly—fierce blue lightnings cleft the mirk with jagged yataghans of electric fire. Huge waves beat upon the narrow beaches, and leaped upon the towering cliffs, dragging mouthfuls of acres down. Ships and steamers, large and small, crowding the Harbor, were jumbled in wild confusion. The smashing of bowsprits and cutwaters, bulwarks, paddle-boxes and stern-boats may be better imagined than described. Outside in the Bay, Hemp, Iron, and Steam waged war with the unleashed elements of Wind and Water. And through all, the siege-batteries of the Allies went on bellowing; and from the wonderful array of Defense Works that had sprung up as by magic since the Army of the South rolled away on the road to Simferopol—Sevastopol answered, with canister, and round-shot, and shell.
As store-ships and troop-ships beached, and pivot-gun war-steamers foundered—and great line-of-battle ships staggered out to sea—The Realm set herself to ride out the gale with full steam up and both anchors out. But as red sparks and black smoke weltered out of her funnels, and the great iron cables rolled off her capstan-drums—one after the other those port and starboard anchors went to the bottom with a roar. And the gale took the brand-new two-thousand-six-hundred-ton Government transport, twisted her round, lifted her up and broke her, as a child breaks a sugar ship that has come off the top of a birthday-cake.
A petty officer of artificers—his rating is unknown, but he ranks as Second-Class Scoundrel—had been bribed with the sum of fifty pounds not to clinch the cable-ends. When the great stern-wave lifted the doomed ship, this man, with another, was on the poop. He shrieked to his mate to dive, but the heart of the poor wretch failed him. And the Second-Class Scoundrel dived—and, looking down into an awful gulf of sliding black-green water, his mate saw him swimming like a frog, far down below the surface, straight for the open sea.... And then The Realm bumped thrice—and broke into barrel-staves and flinders. And her cargo of good goods and bad goods—bogus goods and no goods—and nearly every living soul aboard her—went to the bottom of the Euxine. And young Mortimer Jowell, who had skirted the Harbor on its windward side, and climbed the towering wall of rock that gates it from the Bay, shut up the Dollond telescope through which he had witnessed the tragedy—and sat down upon the hailstone carpeted ground behind a big boulder of pudding-stone to recover and think over things....