"At the last gasp, but alive," one announced.
"How the devil did he get out here?"
"From the _a.s.syrian_--"
"Impossible for any man to swim this far since our torpedo struck--"
"Then he must have gone overboard before it struck--or was thrown--"
A cry of alarm from the group about the gun, awaiting final orders to open fire upon the _a.s.syrian"s_ boats, interrupted the conference. The officers swung away in haste.
"h.e.l.l"s fury! what"s that searchlight?"
"A Yankee destroyer--in all probability the one we dodged yesterday afternoon."
"She"ll find us yet if we don"t submerge. Forward, there--house that gun!
And get below--quickly!"
During a moment of apparent confusion, one of the men sustaining Lanyard caught the attention of an officer.
"What shall we do with this fellow, sir?" he enquired.
"Leave him here to sink or swim as we go down," snapped the officer--"and be d.a.m.ned to him!"
With a supreme effort the adventurer sank his fingers deep into the arms of the two men.
"Wait!" he gasped faintly in German. "On the Emperor"s service--"
"What"s that?" The officer turned back sharply.
"Imperial Secret Service," Lanyard faltered--"Personal Division--Wilhelmstra.s.se Number 27--"
A brilliant glare settled suddenly upon the deck of the submarine, and was welcomed by a panicky gust of oaths. One officer had already popped through the conning-tower hatch, followed by several of the crew. There remained only those supporting Lanyard, and the second officer.
"Take him below!" the latter ordered. "He may be telling the truth. If not...."
In the distance a gun boomed. A sh.e.l.l shrieked over the submarine and dropped into the sea not a hundred yards to starboard. The men rushed Lanyard toward the conning tower. He tried feebly to help them. In that effort consciousness was altogether blotted out....
IX
SUB SEA
When he opened his eyes again he was resting, after a fashion, naked between harsh, damp blankets in a narrow, low-ceiled bunk inches too short for one of his stature.
After an experimental squirm or two he lay very still; his back and all his limbs were stiff and sore, his bullet-seared shoulder burned intolerably beneath a rudely applied first-aid dressing, and he was breathing heavily long, labouring inhalations of an atmosphere sickeningly dank, close, and foul with unspeakable stenches, for which the fumes of sulphuric acid with a rank reek of petroleum and lubricating oils formed but a modest and retiring background.
Also his head felt very thick and dull. He found it extremely difficult to think, and for some time, indeed, was quite unable to think to any purpose.
His very eyes ached in their sockets.
In the ceiling glowed an electric bulb, dimly illuminating a cubicle barely big enough to accommodate the bunk, a dresser, and a small desk with a folding seat. The inner wall was a slightly concave surface of steel plates whose seams oozed moisture. In the opposite wall was a sliding door, open, beyond which ran a narrow alleyway floored with metal grating. Everything in sight was enamelled with white paint and clammy with the sweat of that foetid air.
Over all an unnatural hush brooded, now and again accentuated by a rumble of distant voices and gusts of vacant laughter, once or twice by a curious popping. For a long time he heard nothing else whatever. The effect was singularly disquieting and did its bit to quicken torpid senses to grasp his plight.
Sluggishly enough Lanyard pieced together fragments of lurid memories, reconstructing the sequence of last night"s events scene by scene to the moment of his rescue by the U-boat.
So, it appeared, he was aboard a German submersible, virtually a prisoner, though posing as an agent of the Personal Intelligence Department of the German Secret Service.
To that inspiration of failing consciousness he owed his life, or such of its span as now remained to him, a term whose duration could only be defined by his ability to carry off the imposture pending problematic opportunity to escape. And, a.s.suming that this last were ever offered him, there was no present possibility of guessing how long it might not be deferred.
Its butcher"s mission successfully accomplished, the U-boat was not improbably even now en route for Heligoland, beginning a transatlantic cruise of weeks that might never end save in a nameless grave at the bottom of the Four Seas.
Only the matter of impersonation failed to embarra.s.s in prospect. A natural linguist, Lanyard"s three years within the German lines had put a rare finish upon his mastery of German. More than this, he was well versed in the workings of the Prussian spy system. As Dr. Paul Rodiek, Wilhelmstra.s.se Agent Number 27, he was safe as long as he found no acquaintance of that gentleman in the complement of the submarine; for, largely upon information furnished by Lanyard himself, Dr. Rodiek had been secretly apprehended and executed in the Tower the day before Lanyard left London to join the _a.s.syrian_.
But the question of the U-boat"s present whereabouts and its movements in the immediate future disturbed the adventurer profoundly. He was elaborately incurious about Heligoland; and several weeks" a.s.sociation with the Boche in the close quarters of a submarine was a prospect that revolted. Wellnigh any fate were preferable....
Uncertain footsteps sounded in the alleyway, paused at the entrance to his cubicle. He turned his head wearily on the pillow. In the doorway stood a man whose slenderly elegant carriage of a Prussian officer was not disguised even by his shapeless wreck of a naval lieutenant"s uniform, a man with a countenance of singularly unpleasant cast, leaving out of all consideration the grease and grime that discoloured it. His narrow forehead slanted back just a trace too sharply, his nose was thin and overlong, his mouth thin and cruel beneath its ambitious mustache a la Kaiser; his small black eyes, set much too close together, blazed with unholy exhilaration.
As soon as he spoke Lanyard understood that he was drunk, drunk with more than the champagne of which he presently boasted.
"Awake, eh?" he greeted Lanyard with a mirthless snarl. "You"ve slept like the dead man I took you for at first, my friend--a solid fourteen hours, my word for it! Feeling better now?"
Lanyard"s essays to reply began and ended in a croak for water. The Prussian nodded, disappeared, returned with an aluminium cup of stale cold water mixed with a little brandy.
"Champagne if you like," he offered, as Lanyard, painfully propping himself up on an elbow, gulped like an animal from the vessel held to his lips. "We are holding a little celebration, you know."
Lanyard dropped back to the pillow, the question in his eyes.
"Celebrating our success," the Prussian responded. "We got her, and that means much honour and a long furlough to boot, when we get home, just as failure would have spelled--I don"t like to think what. I shouldn"t care to fill the shoes of those poor devils who let the _a.s.syrian_ escape them off Ireland, I can tell you."
Something very much like true fear flickered in his small eyes as he pondered the punishment meted out to those who failed.
So the U-boat was homeward bound! Strange one noticed no motion of her progress, heard no noise of machinery.
"Where are we?" Lanyard whispered.
"Peacefully asleep on the bottom, about five miles south of Martha"s Vineyard, waiting till it is dark enough to slip in to our base."
"Base?"
The Prussian hiccoughed and giggled. "On the south sh.o.r.e of the Vineyard,"
he confided with alcoholic glee: "snuggest little haven heart could wish, well to the north of all deep-sea traffic; and the coastwise trade runs still farther north, through Vineyard Sound, other side the island. Not a soul ever comes that way, not a soul suspects. How should they?
The admirable charts of the Yankee Coast and Geodetic Survey"--he sneered--"show no break in the south beach of the island, between the ocean and the ponds. But there is one. The sea made the breach during a gale, our people helped with a little Trotyl, tides and storms did the rest. Now we can enter a secluded, landlocked harbour with just enough water at low tide, and lie hidden there till the word comes to move again--three miles of dense scrub forest, all privately owned as a game preserve, fenced and patrolled, between us and the nearest cultivated land--and friends in plenty on the island to keep all our needs supplied--petroleum, fresh vegetables, champagne, all that. Just the same we take no chances--never make our landfall by day, never enter or leave harbour except at night."