For they said the North Sea was full of them; legions of them tossed broadcast from the black hell of some human mind. And beneath them, deeper, lying as still as death on the Channel's floor, waited the human submarines in unseen watery depths—motionless, patient, awaiting the moment to strike.
Night came; the white level glare of searchlights flooded the steamer, lingered, shifted, tossed their dazzling arms heavenward as though imploring the Most High, then swept unseen horizons where the outermost waters curve with the curving globe.
Only one light burned in the stateroom, but the port was not covered.
Karen lay on the bed, unstirring save for a slight tremor of her shoulders now and then. Her brown hair, half loosened, had fallen in thick burnished curls on the pillow; one hand covered her eyes, palm outward. Under it the vivid lips, scarcely parted, rested on each other in a troubled curve.
Guild brooded silently on the lounge under the port. Sometimes his sombre gaze rested on her, sometimes on the locked satchel which had rolled to the side of the bed.
Every time the arrowy beam of light from a warship flooded the cabin with swift white splendour his heart seemed to stop, for the menace of the wireless was always a living dread; and the stopping of a neutral ship and the taking from it of suspects had become a practice too common even to excite comment, let alone protest.
Twice they were stopped; twice Ardoise signals twinkled; but no cutter came alongside, and no officer boarded them. It was an eternity of suspense to Guild, and he stood by the open port, listening, the satchel in his hand ready to fling it out into the turmoil of heaving waters.
The steward came, and Guild ordered something served for them both in the stateroom. Karen had not awakened, but her hand had slipped from her eyes and it lay across the edge of the bed.
On the bridal finger glimmered the plain gold band—his credentials to her from her father.