Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound; A Red Cross Worker's Ocean Perils

Strangely enough, the queer-looking woman continued to put herself in Ruth’s way. After dinner she sought her out in a corner of the saloon where Ruth was listening to the music. The windows of the saloon were shaded so that no light could get out; but it was quite cozy and cheerful therein.

“You are Miss Fielding, I see by the purser’s list,” said the curious person, staring at Ruth through her glasses.

“I have not the pleasure of knowing you,” returned the girl of the Red Mill. “Can I do anything for you?”

“I am Irma Lentz. I have been studying in Paris. This war is a hateful thing. It has almost ruined my career. It has got so now that one cannot work in peace even in the Latin Quarter of the town. War, war, war! That is all one hears. I am going back to New York to see if I can find peace and quietness – where one may work without being bothered.”

“You are – ?”

“An artist. I have studied with some of the best painters in France. But I declare! even those teachers have closed their ateliers and gone to war. I must, perforce, close my own studio and go back to America. And America is crude.”

“Seems to me I have heard that said before,” sniffed Ruth. “Although my acquaintance among artists has been small. Do you expect to find perfect peace and quietness in the United States?”

“I do not expect to find the disturbance that is rife in Paris,” said Irma Lentz shortly. “This war is too unpopular in the United States for more than a certain class of the people to be greatly disturbed over what is going on so far away from home.”

Ruth looked at her amazedly. The artist seemed quite to believe what she said. Aside from some few pro-Germans whom she had heard talk before Ruth Fielding had left the United States, she had heard nothing like this. It was what the Germans themselves had believed – and wished to believe.

“I wonder where you got that, Miss Lentz,” Ruth allowed herself to say in amazement.

“Got what?”

“The idea that the war – at least now we are in it – is unpopular at home. You will discover your mistake. I understand that even in Washington Square they know we are fighting a war for democracy. You will find your friends of Greenwich Village – is that not the locality of New York you mean? – are very well aware that we are at war.”

“Perfect nonsense!” snapped Irma Lentz, and she got up and flounced away.

“Now,” thought the girl of the Red Mill, very much puzzled, “I wonder just what and who she is? And has she been in Paris all through the war and has not yet awakened to the seriousness of the situation? Then there is something fundamentally wrong with Irma Lentz.”

She might not have given the strange woman much of her attention during the voyage, however, for Ruth did not like unpleasant people and there were so many others who were interesting, to say the least, on board the ship, if a little incident had not occurred early the next morning which both surprised Ruth and made her deeply suspicious of Irma Lentz.

The girl could not sleep very well because of pain in her shoulder and arm. Perhaps she had tried to use the arm more than she should. However, being unable to sleep, she rose at dawn and rang for the night stewardess. She had already won this woman’s interest, and she helped Ruth dress. The girl left her stateroom and went on deck, which was free to the passengers now.

As she passed through a narrow way behind the forward deck-house on the main deck, she heard a sudden explosion of voices – a sharp, high voice and one deeper and more guttural. But the point that held Ruth Fielding’s attention so quickly was that the language used was German! There was no doubting that fact.

There certainly should be nobody using that language on this British ship carrying Americans to the United States! That was Ruth’s first thought.

She walked quietly to the corner of the house and peered around it. The morning was still misty and there were few persons on deck save the gangs of cleaners. Backed against a backstay, and facing the point where the girl of the Red Mill stood, was Irma Lentz, in mackintosh and veil.

The strange woman was talking angrily with a barefooted sailor in working clothes. He was bareheaded as well as barefooted, and his coarse shirt was open at the throat displaying a hairy chest. He possessed a mop of flaxen hair, and his countenance was too Teutonic of cast to be mistaken.

Besides, like the woman, he was speaking German in a most excited and angry fashion.

CHAPTER IX – QUEER FOLKS

In school Ruth Fielding and her classmates had taken German just as they had French. Jennie Stone often said she had forgotten the former language just as fast as she could and had felt much better after it was out of her system.

But the girl of the Red Mill seldom forgot anything she learned well. She had not used the German language as much as she had French. Nevertheless she remembered quite clearly what she had learned of it.

The seaman who was talking so excitedly to Irma Lentz, and whom Ruth overheard on the deck of the Admiral Pekhard, used Low German instead of the High German taught in the educational institutions. Ruth, however, understood quite a little of what was said.

“Stop talking to me!” Miss Lentz commanded, breaking in upon what the man was saying.

“I must tell you, Fraulein – ”

“Go tell Boldig. Not me. How dare you speak to a passenger? You know it is against all ship rules.”

“Undt am I de goat yedt?” growled the man, in anger and in atrocious English, as the young woman swept past him. Then in his own tongue – and this time Ruth understood him clearly – he added: “Am I to work in that fireroom while you and Boldig live softly? What would become of me if anything should happen?”

Fortunately the woman did not come Ruth’s way. She whisked out of sight just as the tramp of a smart footstep was heard along the deck. An officer came into sight.

“Here, my man, this is no part of the deck for you,” he said sharply. “Stoker, aren’t you? Get back to your quarters.”

The flaxen-haired man stumbled away. He almost ran, it seemed, to get out of sight. The officer passed Ruth Fielding, bowing to her politely, but did not halt.

The girl of the Red Mill was greatly disturbed by what she had seen and overheard. Yet she was not sure that she should speak to anybody about the incident. She let the officer go on without a word. She found a chair on a part of the deck that had already been swabbed down, and she sat there to think and to watch the first sunbeams play upon the wire rigging of the ship and upon the dancing waves.

The ocean was no novelty to Ruth; but it is ever changeable. No two sunrises can ever be alike at sea. She watched with glowing cheeks and wide eyes the blossoming of the new day.

She was not a person to fly off at a tangent. No little thing disturbed her usual calm. Had Helen been there, Ruth realized that her black-eyed girl chum would have insisted upon running right away to somebody in authority and repeating what had been overheard.

There was just one circumstance which kept Ruth from putting the matter quite aside and considering it nothing remarkable that two people should be speaking German on this British ship. That was her conversation the evening before with Irma Lentz, the artist.

The woman had made a very unfavorable impression on Ruth Fielding. Any person who could speak so callously of the war and wartime conditions in Paris, Ruth did not consider trustworthy. Such a woman might easily be connected with people who favored Germany and her cause. Then – her name!

Ruth realized that one of the greatest difficulties that Americans, especially, have to meet in this war is the German name. Many, many people with such names are truly patriots – are American to the very marrow of their bones. On the other hand, there are those of German name who are as dangerous and deadly as the moccasin. They strike without warning.

In this case, however, Irma Lentz, it seemed to Ruth, had given warning. She had frankly displayed the fact that her heart was not with her country in the war. After what Ruth had been through it annoyed her very much to meet anybody who was not whole-heartedly for the cause of America and the Allies.

She thought the matter over most seriously until first breakfast call. By that time there had appeared quite a number of the passengers. The more seriously wounded had all the second cabin, so those passengers who could get on deck were like one big family in the first cabin.

As the sea remained smooth, the party gathered at breakfast was almost as numerous as that at dinner the night before. Irma Lentz did not appear, however; but Ruth’s Red Cross friend was there to give her such aid at table as she needed.

“What would you do,” she asked him in the course of the meal, “if you heard two people speaking German together on this ship?”

He eyed her for a moment curiously, then replied: “You cannot keep these stewards from talking their own language. Some of them are German-Swiss, I presume.”

“Not stewards,” Ruth said softly.

“Do you mean passengers? Well, I speak German myself.”

“And so do I. At least, I can speak it,” laughed the girl of the Red Mill. “But I don’t.”

“No. Ordinarily I never speak it myself – now,” admitted the man. “But just what do you mean, Miss Fielding?”

“I heard two people early this morning speaking German in secret on deck.”

“Some of the deckhands?”

“One was a stoker. The other was one of our first cabin passengers.”