Page:Vance--The false faces.djvu/132

114 he could not, he was too weak and faint. Ceasing to struggle, he rested in half stupour [sic], panting.

With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back. Rousing, Lanyard saw several figures emerge from the conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless, shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above him, filling their lungs with the sweet air. He tried to call to them, but evoked a mere rattle from his throat.

Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immediately over him, fixing binoculars to their eyes, their voices quite audible.

A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he heard them conferring together in the German tongue.

Death, then, was but a little delayed.

Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.

Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon his senses he caught broken phrases, snatches of sentences:

"… sinking fast … struck square amidships … broke her back. …"

"… trouble with her boats. There goes one over! …"

"… fools jumping overboard like cattle. …"

"What's that rocket? Do the swine want us to shell their boats?"

"Why not? They're asking for it!"

One of the officers lowered his glasses and barked a series of sharp commands. The crew on deck leaped to attention. One leaned over the conning-tower hatch and shouted to his mates below. A hatch forward of the tower opened, and a quick-firing gun on a disappear-