[Illustration: "I have a cabin below. I place it at the lady's disposal"]
On the lifeboat for those first seconds a silence of petrification reigned. On the submarine sounded voices--voices which hadn't been heard before. For one sick instant Newcomb tried to fit those sounds to expostulation, to revolt. And then hope died, transfixed by laughter.
But the commander himself was grave, almost decorous.
"Well, what do you say?" He was looking straight at the girl. "You must make up your mind quickly. I've wasted too much time already."
"Far too much," burst from a man's throat down below.
"Unless," the German went on calmly--"unless, as seems probable, the lady hasn't understood."
No wonder that he so interpreted the lady's face, for in the circumscribed field of intense light her eyes showed wide to an incredible vision. "It is true what your own people have told you," he went on. "To stay where you are means death."
She spoke directly to him for the first time.
"The fate of men in war," said the commander. "There is no need for you to share it."
Only the rushing sound of the water for a breath's interval till she gave him the measure of her incorrigible hope. "You'll save the others, too!"
He checked his impatient gesture to demand: "You think they won't let you come--alone!" No wonder he persisted, for she was looking at him still with that excited hopefulness, though dashed now with bewilderment, her brows drawn together as though she were trying with all her might and main, in spite of dazzle and glare, to make out something dim and far and inconceivably precious--nothing less than an ultimate fate in man.
"I give you my word," he called out, "nobody shall prevent you."
Twice fifteen hands were ready to make the assurance good. Four of them were laid to the oars. It was all over while you'd count half a dozen, but out of those flying seconds of half-paralyzed effort Newcomb kept the memory of a lifeboat that seemed to share the mortal agitations of her crew; a boat that for an instant--an eternity--swung under unequal oar-strokes in an oily glitter that swelled up black, polished, till it shut out the horizon stars.
As though no man had stirred, the _Leyden_ captain was roaring: "What are you about? _Shove off!_" His voice thickened to incoherent cursing even before a couple of boat-hook heads crashed down on the gunwale and hauled the boat sharply back against the body of the submarine.