Who Goes There!

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.

CHAPTER X

FORCE

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.

"If another ship stops us, they'll have to go overboard, anyway."

"We may not be stopped again. If we are, we have time."

"Karen."

"Yes – dear?"

A slight flush came into his haggard face; he hesitated, looked up at her where she was kneeling on the sofa beside him. "Dear," he said gently, "I have never intended that you should carry those papers to your father, or to anybody else."

"I don't quite understand you."

"Try to understand. I am a friend to England – even a closer friend to – Belgium."

"I know. But you are my friend, too."

"Devotedly, Karen." He took hold of her hand; she slipped down to the sofa and settled there beside him with a little air of confidence which touched and troubled him.

"I am your friend," he said. "But there is another friendship that demands first of all the settlement of prior obligations. And, if these obligations conflict with any others, the others must give way, Karen."

"What do you mean?"

"The obligations of friendship – of – of affection – these must give way before a duty more imperative."

"What duty?"

"Allegiance."

"To – whom?"

"To the country in which my race had its origin."

"Yes… But America is neutral, Kervyn."

"I mean – Belgium," he said in a low voice.

"Belgium! Are you then Belgian?" she asked, amazed.

"When Belgium is in trouble – yes."

"How can you be loyal to two countries?"

"By being loyal to my own manhood – and to the God who made me," he answered in a low voice.