“They’re on every side of us,” she said quietly. “The direction from which the sound comes tells that.”
“On every side of us.” Riggs seemed in a daze.
“But you can’t know unless you’ve listened to them as I have.” She gripped his arm in her excitement. “They’re closing in on our convoy from all sides. Closing in for the kill.”
“Closing in for the kill.” The Lieutenant spoke like one in a trance. “Thousands of lives, soldiers, nurses, WACs, airplanes, ammunition, food—closing in for the kill.
“Watch the radio!” he ordered. “I’ll be back with the Captain!”
“The Captain! Oh! Oh! No!” she cried. But he was gone.
To say that Sally was frightened would not have expressed it at all. For some time after Riggs left, she sat there shivering with fear.
Riggs had gone for the Captain. Did that mean that he believed what she had told him, or had he been shocked by the realization that she had laid herself open to court-martial?
“He’s gone for the Captain,” she told herself at last. “He’d never think of doing that, just to get me into deeper trouble. He’s not that kind of a man.” At that she drew in three deep breaths and felt better.
“He’s gone for the Captain,” she thought and shuddered. She had seen the Captain on the bridge, that was all. He had seemed a fine figure of a man, the sort you saw on the bridge in movies, stern, unsmiling, inflexible. She shuddered again.