Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/105

 Ruth gazed at the U-boat aghast with fury—fury and loathing beyond any feeling which she could have imagined. She had supposed she had known full loathing when she learned of the first deeds done in Termonde and Louvain; then she had thought, when the Germans sank the Lusitania, that it was utterly impossible for her to detest fellow-men more than those responsible. But now she knew that any passion previously stirred within her was only the weak and vacuous reaction to a tale which was told. She had viewed her first dead slain by a fellowman; and amazing, all overwhelming instincts—an urge to kill, kill in return, kill in punishment, kill in revenge—possessed her. She had not meant to kill before. She had thought of saving life—saving the Belgians from more barbarities, saving the lives of those at sea; she had thought of her task ahead, and of the risks she was to run, as saving the lives of American and British and French soldiers. For the first time she thought of herself as an instrument to kill—kill Germans, many, many Germans; all that she could.

Someone had come into the wreck of that cabin behind her now. A steward, probably; or perhaps Hubert Lennon, who had found her again. She did not turn but continued to stare at the U-boat, her hands clinging to the jagged hole made by its shell. A man's hand caught her shoulder and a voice spoke to her—Gerry Hull's voice.

"Come with me," he was saying to her. "You cannot stay here; come to a safer place."

"A safer place!" she repeated to him. "How can we help to kill them on that boat?" she cried to him.

He was undoing her fingers, by main strength, from