Page:Barbour--For the freedom from the seas.djvu/321

 figure with straining grasp of dirty, oil-stained hands.

"Gee, Dad, I thought you were dead!" he sobbed

The captain blew his nose loudly, and: "Bless my soul!" he said, "Bless my soul!"

Twilight crept out of the east over leagues of empty sea. The Antietam, patched and tinkered, hobbled slowly toward the oncoming darkness. A mile away the Gyandotte kept her company. A few miles astern a spreading patch at oil marked the grave of the U C 46. For the rest all was tumbling sea, gray green ahead, glinting with copper lights behind where the last rays of the sun touched it. Somewhere behind the darkening horizon lay the shores of France—and safety for the wounded, corpse-laden Antietam.

In a quiet niche of the lower deck a little group sat and talked after supper. Two of them sat very close together, a tall, thin man with grayish hair and a smiling, wistfully happy youth of eighteen. With them were Martin and Tip and Garey. Captain Troy had told his story for them and they had listened raptly. They had heard how, after the explosion of the first shell aboard the Jonas Clinton, he had come to himself in the 296