Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/109



HE deck floor just beyond her, where he had been, was gone; or rather—as she saw now through the smoke—it slanted steeply down like a chute into a chasm of indefinite depth from which the heavy, stifling smoke was pouring. A draft sucked the smoke out of the shattered side of the ship over the sea and gave Ruth cleaner air to breathe for seconds at a time. Gerry Hull must have been hurled into that chasm when that last detonation blew away the floor; or else he must have flung himself into the sea.

Ruth called his name, shouting first into the smoke column and then, creeping down to the shell hole in the side, she thrust her head out and gazed at the sea. Wreckage from the upper deck—wooden chairs, bits of canvas—swept backwards; she saw no one swimming. The splash of the waves dashed upon her, the ship was rushing onward, but not so swiftly as before, and with a distinct change in the thrust of the engines and with a strange sensation of strain on the ship. Only one engine was going, Ruth decided—the port engine; it was being forced faster and faster to do the work of both and the rudder was pulled against the swerve of the port screw to keep the vessel from swinging in a circle.

The guns on deck were firing steadily, it seemed; but