Роберт Чамберс - Who Goes There!

"Did you not board this boat in company with your wife?" asked Jamison in a low voice.

"No."

"Our information is otherwise."

"Jamison, you know whether I am likely to lie to you. And I say to you on my word of honour that I did not come aboard this boat with my wife."

"Is she not on board?"

"She is not."

Jamison said regretfully: "No good, old fellow. We know she is not your wife. But we want her. I think you had better prepare her to come with us."

"Jamison, will you listen to me and believe me?"

"Yes, of course."

"Then, on my word of honour, the woman you have come to take from this ship is absolutely innocent of any—intentional—crime."

"I take your word for it, Guild."

"You can guess my sentiments in regard to this war, can't you?" insisted Guild.

"I think I can."

"Then listen, Jamison. I pledge you my word that through this young girl, and through me, nothing shall ever happen that could in any manner be detrimental to your country or its allies. Don't press this matter, for God's sake!"

"Guild," he said quietly, "I believe you absolutely. But—both you and this young lady must come aboard the Wyvern with me. Those are my orders, old fellow. I can't go back on them; I have no discretion in this matter. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

After a silence, Guild linked his arm in the gold–laced arm of his old–time friend and walked back to where the captain stood fidgeting.

"I won't go, Jamison," he said, loudly but pleasantly. "I am not obliged to go aboard your ship. Captain Vandervelde, I claim the protection of your flag for myself and for my wife."

"Captain Vandervelde knows that it means only trouble for him," said Jamison, forcing a smile. "He is not likely to defy the Wyvern , I think."

They all turned in the sudden glitter of the Wyvern's searchlight and gazed across the darkness where the unseen cruiser was playing on them from stem to stern.

"Will you come with me, Guild?" asked Jamison quietly.

"No, Jamison, I'm hanged if I do…. And that's too close to the truth to be very funny," he added, laughingly.

"The Wyvern will merely send a guard for you. It's no good bluffing, Guild. You know it yourself."

"International law is no bluff!"

"International law is merely in process of evolution just now. It's in the making. And we are making it."

"That remark is very British."

"Yes, I'm afraid it is. I'm sorry."

"Well, I won't go aboard the Wyvern , I tell you. I've got to stay on this ship! I—" he leaned over and said under his breath—"it may mean death to me, Jamison, to go aboard your ship. Not because of anything I have to fear from your people. On the contrary. But they'll shoot me in Germany. Can't you tell your captain I'm trustworthy?"

"What is the use, Guild?" said the young man gently. "I have my orders."

Guild looked at him, looked about him at the grave faces of the captain and the second officer, looked out across the black void of water where the long beam of the searchlight had shifted skyward, as though supplicating Heaven once more.

Only a miracle could save Karen. He knew that as he stood there, silent, with death in his heart.

And the miracle happened. For, as he stood staring at the heavenward beam of the unseen cruiser's searchlight, all at once the ship herself became grotesquely visible, tilted up oddly out of the sea in the centre of a dull reddish glow. The next instant a deadened boom sounded across the night as though from infinite depths; a shaft of fire two hundred feet high streamed skyward.

"That ship has been torpedoed! Oh, my God!" said a voice.

"The Wyvern has hit a mine!" roared the Dutch captain. "I'm going to get out of this now !"

Jamison's youthful face was marble; he swayed slightly where he stood. The next instant he was over the side like a cat, and Guild heard him hailing his boat in an agonized voice which broke with a dry, boyish sob.

From everywhere out of the blackness searchlights stretched out tremulous phantom arms toward the Wyvern , and their slender white beams crossed and recrossed each other, focussing on the stricken warship, which was already down by the stern, her after deck awash, and that infernal red glow surrounding her like the glow of hell around a soul in torment.

Passengers, seamen, stewards crowded and crushed him to the rail, shouting, struggling, crying out in terror or in pity.

Guild caught an officer by his gold sleeve. "We ought to stand by her," he said mechanically. "Her magazine is afire!"

"There are boats a–plenty to look after her," returned the officer; "the British destroyers are all around her like chicks about a dying hen. She's their parent ship; and there go their boats, pulling hell for sweeps! God! If it was a mine, I wish we were at Amsterdam, I do!"

The steamer was already under way; electric signals sparkled from her; signals were sparkling everywhere in the darkness around them. And all the while the cruiser with her mortal wound, enveloped in her red aura, agonized there in the horrible sombre radiance of her own burning vitals.

Far away in the black void a ship began to fire star–shells.

As the awed throng on the moving liner's decks gazed out across the night, the doomed cruiser split slowly amidships, visibly, showing the vivid crack of her scarlet, jagged wound. For a second or two she fairly vomited hell–fire; lay there spouting it out in great crimson gouts; then she crashed skyward into incandescent fragments like a single gigantic bomb, and thunderous blackness blotted out sea and sky once more.

He knocked sharply at the stateroom door and called, "Karen! It is I! Open!"

She flung open the door, satchel in hand, and he entered, closed the door, relocked it, and dropped down on the lounge, staring at space.

"Kervyn! What is it?" she asked faintly, one hand against her breast.

"It is all right," he said—"as far as we are concerned—for the present, anyway. God! I can't realize it—I can't get over it―"

"What, Kervyn?" she faltered, kneeling on the lounge beside the half dazed man. "What happened? Why are you so ghastly pale? Are we really quite safe? Or are you trying to make it easier for me―"

"No; you and I are safe enough for the moment," he said. "But men are dying out yonder. The sea is full of dead men, Karen. And—I saw it all."

"I heard guns. What has happened?"

"I don't know. It was a mine perhaps, perhaps a torpedo. A ship has been blown up." He lifted his head and turned to her: "But you are not to say such a thing to anybody—after I leave you at Trois Fontaines."

"No, Kervyn."

"Not to anybody. Not even to your father. Do you understand me, Karen?"

"No. But I won't tell anybody."

"Because," he explained wearily, "the Admiralty may have reasons for concealing it. If they mean to conceal it, this ship of ours will be stopped again and held for a while in some French or British port."

"Why?"

"So that the passengers cannot talk about what they saw tonight."

His haunted glance fell on the satchel at their feet. "As for that," he said, "I've had enough of it, and I'll take no further chances. Where are our passports?"

"Locked in with the other papers. I was all ready to throw them out of the port when you knocked."

"Unlock the bag now. I'll get rid of the whole business," he said bluntly.

"Kervyn—I can't do that."

"What?" he exclaimed.

"I can't destroy those papers if there is a chance of getting through with them. I gave my promise, you know."

The dull surprise in his eyes changed gradually to impatience.