"What do you mean to do?" I asked.
"Ram him," answered the captain promptly, "if it is a submarine and we can get there in time. A fast sailing vessel is better, for he could hear our screw. But it is no submarine. It looks more like a vessel's bilge. There! Ha!"
The glistening body moved, and great flukes suddenly reared on high, and the body disappeared.
"A sleeping whale," Captain Fergus observed. "Another submarine report gone wrong."
"Are there any over here?"
"Not now, I am reasonably sure. Don't believe there will be, although I may be mistaken. They can use them to better advantage on the other side. But there may be, in time, unless Germany blows up first. We don't know what is happening in Germany. They may blow up at any minute, and they may not. Shouldn't be surprised—and I shouldn't be surprised if they kept going for a year or two longer. Look at the Russian army, just got well going and they have mutiny and lose it all. Too bad! I'd like to see any crew of mine try it!"
Elizabeth laughed and went below, and Captain Fergus began again his walking to and fro. Presently Elizabeth came up and spoke to him, and the course was changed, and in an hour we had sighted a steamer making for us.
It was the Rattlesnake; and the two vessels lay quiet on that rolling sea while our tender went over with a package of papers, and came back with Bobby. And the Rattlesnake turned about and we soon lost her in the haze, and we turned about and headed for home.
Bobby was not talkative on the way back. Indeed, Bobby has not been himself for some weeks; not the Bobby that I knew of old. I cannot fix the date at which the change occurred, but it was some date that had to do with Elizabeth. Every date has to do with Elizabeth, so far as he is concerned. And though he spoke to her when he came over the side—spoke gravely, I suppose he thought—it seemed more like petulance to me—he said no word more to her, but sat in his chair and gazed moodily out over the water. And Elizabeth sat in her chair, and she gazed at Bobby under lowered lids, and she smiled her smile of suppressed amusement. And presently, her thoughts being unguarded, she raised her lids a little, so that I saw all the lights of the sea playing in her eyes, that were yet regarding Bobby, and there came into them a tender light that was more than all the light on sea and sky. And she glanced at me, and she saw that I had seen, and she flushed slowly, and got up and went below.
"Bobby," I said, "are you not ashamed of yourself?"