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42 them," he said—"if any survived that explosion with strength enough to swim."

He spoke from the surface of his thoughts and with a calm that veiled profound surprise. The woman by his side was neither the American widow nor her English daughter, but wholly a stranger to the ship's company he knew.

The training of the Lone Wolf had been wasted if one swift glance had failed to comprehend every essential detail: that tall, straight, slender figure cloaked in the folds of a garment whose hood framed a face of singular pallor and sweetness in the moonlight, its shadowed eyes wide with emotion, its lips a little parted. …

With a shiver she lifted her hands to her eyes as if to darken the visions of her imagination.

"They die out there," she said, in murmurs barely audible. … "We turn our backs on them. … You think that right?"

"We play the game by the rules the enemy himself laid down," Lanyard returned. "They would have sunk us without one qualm of pity—would, in all probability, have shelled our boats had any succeeded in getting off. They have done as much before, and will again. It is out of reason to insist that the captain risk his ship in the hope of picking up one or two drowning assassins."

"Risk his ship? How? They are helpless"

"As a rule, U-boats hunt in pairs; always, when specially charged to sink one certain vessel. It was so with the Lusitania, with the Arabic as well; I don't doubt it was so in this instance—that we should have