Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/116

 every second or so, casting the sheath of seaspray aside and rushing on gray and dun again—the bow of the destroyer coming up. She was coming up very fast—with a marvelous, leaping swiftness which sent the blood tingling through Ruth.

The destroyer seemed hurled through the water, so fast she came; it seemed impossible that engines, turning screws, could send a ship on as that vessel dashed; she seemed to advance hundreds of yards at a leap, hurling the spray high before her and screened by it for a flash; and when she thrust through the foam and cut clear away from it, she was larger and clearer and nearer. And, as she came, she fought. Her guns were going—one, two, three of them! Ruth could see the gossamer of their gases as they puffed forward and were swept backward; she could hear on the wind the resound of the quick firers. Steadily, rhythmically, relentlessly they rang, beating over the sea like great bells booming in vengeance for the Ribot's dead.

Ruth felt lifted up, glorified as by nothing she had ever known before. She turned to the man who had come up beside her; he was Gerry Hull and, as he looked over the sea at the destroyer, she saw the blood burning red, paling, and burning bright again in his face.

"What ship is that?" Ruth cried to him. "Do you know whether it's English or French or our own?"

"It's the Starke!" Gerry Hull replied. "The U. S. S. Starke, she reported herself to us! She made thirty-one knots the hour on her builder's trial two years ago; but she promised us to make the forty miles to us in an hour and ten minutes! And she's beating that, if I know speed.