Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/113

 she could hear his voice and the voices of others close by; but all other sound and reverberation had ceased.

"I was separated from you," Gerry Hull was explaining to her. "I was coming back to try and get you out."

"I went down the way you fell," she replied to him. "Then I saw a man in the sea. I thought he was you. I tried to get him."

She was silent for a few moments while he carried her; the miracle of stillness continued; but it was a great effort for her to speak.

"I would have done it for anyone."

"I know you would," he said to her.

"You've seen Hubert?" she asked.

"He's not among the hurt," Gerry answered.

She was quite certain now that the stillness had continued so long that it could not be merely the interval between firing or between the arrival of German shells.

"What is it?" she asked him.

"What is what, Cynthia Gail?"

He called her whole name, as he knew it, as she had been calling his. "We're not fighting," she said. "We haven't surrendered or—are we sinking?"

"A destroyer's come in sight," he said. "It's fighting one of the Huns. Listen!" He halted for an instant to let her hear the distant sound of guns.

"I hear it," she said.

"We hit that U-boat, we think, so that it can't submerge and has to keep fighting on the surface. The other's submerged."

He brought her down a stairway into some large compartment, evidently below the water line; it seemed to have