Only those few on deck outside of the weather-cloth saw the sight, and then for but an instant. Never would they forget it!
Lying low in the water, all awash from the break of her topgallant-forecastle to the lift of her high poop-deck, the green seas running under her bridge and about her superstructure, swayed a great mass of iron and steel of full five thousand tons! Ship without a soul! A wisp of a flag, upside down, still floated in her slackened rigging; swinging falls dangled from her empty davits. Then the fog closed in, and, as a picture on a lantern-slide fades and disappears, she vanished and was gone!
A white-faced boy looked up into Miss Dorn's frightened eyes. His lips moved, but made no sound.
On the bridge, the captain had grasped the second officer by the arm. "My God! Fitzgerald, did you see that? It was the Drachenburg."
"Derelict and abandoned! But, by heaven, sir, she signaled us!"
The captain turned quickly. "Stop those engines!" he ordered hoarsely.
The tearing pulses down below ceased their beating; it was as if a great heart had stopped! The ship, breathless at her own escape, lay calm and quiet in the fog. The only sound was of the greasy waves lapping her high steel flanks. Yet——
Admiral Dorn, still standing beneath the bridge, with both hands grasping the rail, shivered and drew breath. What might have happened if—— He looked forward. He imagined he could hear the crash, see the great bow sinking; he could hear the splintering of the bulk-heads, the screams of the people tumbling up the companionways, the panic and pandemonium, the mad rush for the boats, the horrid, slow subsidence. But it was not to be; the danger had gone by!
Now he remembered having heard that first low whistle before the two that had signaled so plainly: "I have my helm to starboard—passing to starboard of you!" And yet, well did he know that no fires blazed in those dead furnaces, no steam was coming from that rusty, salt-incrusted funnel. It was as if the dead had spoken to warn the living! He shivered once more, and staggered to the bridge-ladder, holding on and listening.
Three, four, five times did the Caronia's siren wail out into the stillness. No reply. And then the throbbing pulses took up their beat again.