Page:Ruth of the U.S.A. (IA ruthofusa00balm).pdf/120

 shock which had battered even the Ribot so far away; water might be coming in upon them, suffocating them, drowning them there like rats in a trap. The vision flowed before Ruth's eyes for an instant with horror; then she saw them, not choking and fighting each other for escape which none could find, but crouching safe and smiling in their boat, stealing away swiftly and undamaged to wait chance to rise again to try another torpedo at the Starke or to surprise with gunfire, at the next dawn, another vessel like the Ribot and murder more people in their beds and fill the space below decks with the dead and the agonized dying.

"Get 'em!" Gerry Hull, close beside her, was praying. "Oh, get 'em now! Get 'em!"

No reaction to weakness had come to him; years ago, he had passed beyond that; and Ruth, at once, had recovered.

"Get 'em!" Aloud, without being conscious of it, she echoed his ejaculation; and astern of the Starke, as the few minutes before, another great geyser of seawater arose; another titanic blow, disseminating through the water, beat upon the Ribot. The Starke was turning about short, again; but when she rushed back over her wake, this time she dropped no other depth charge; she slowed a little instead, and circled while she examined carefully the surface of the sea. Then suddenly she straightened her course away to the south; she buried her bow in a wave; with the rush of her propellers, foam churned at her stern; she was at full speed after the U-boat which she first had engaged and which, during this interlude, had run quite out of sight to the south or had sunk