The Sword and the Net полностью

At first it did not seem enough. The blood sang in his head as he called upon his body for more force, and yet more. From the other side of the bulkhead—from inside the cabin—he could hear a woman’s voice. It was saying the same words, over and over again. “Derek!” it was saying. “Derek: go up on deck—at once! Go to our boat-station. . . . Do you hear me, Derek! . . .”

Otto called upon final and hidden reserves. There was a tearing crackle in the web—and the main prop of the obstacle came slowly down, bringing with it a shower of lesser, broken pieces of shattered wood and twisted scraps of metal.

The boy fell, but was on his feet again in an instant. There was a dull red bruise across his forehead, and from a jagged scratch on his forehead ran a thin trickle of blood. But a way was clear to the door and he darted at it and tugged it open. Subconsciously, Otto noticed that the hands which did the tugging left a wet red smear upon the bright brass of the handle.

A woman stood upon the other side of the threshold. She was young and tall and her hair hung down almost to her waist over the robe of blue silk which covered her. She put arms about the small figure and tried to pull it to her, patting at the clumsy cork of the life-belt with unsteady hands and then in horror looking at the long ugly scratch upon the forehead. She seemed to be saying something—but her son would have none of it. He pulled free of her arms and tugged at the blue robe and was sternly practical. He said:

“Come on, Mother! Hurry!” He suddenly pulled further away from her, eyeing here severely. “Where’s your life-belt?” He went past her into the cabin, searching.

Then the torpedo struck. Why the U-boat commander should so suddenly and extravagantly have abandoned the hitherto efficacious gunnery in favour of the absolutely sure but infinitely more expensive torpedo, will always be an unanswerable question except to the man himself, particularly as the Vulcania was already doomed. Battered, helpless, sinking and afire as she was, it is impossible to do more than guess at the motivation for the extra blow. Perhaps the commander thought that help was coming to her, by aeroplane or destroyer; perhaps he was carried away by the completeness of his hollow victory; perhaps it was a subordinate’s mistake. There is an answer, there must be—but whatever it is, the fact remains that the torpedo was fired and did strike.

It struck the Vulcania’s unprotected hull squarely amidships, on the port side; the side to which she was already listing. There was a different sound then as it exploded—a muffled, rending, underneath sort of sound at once duller and larger than the other sounds of bombardment had been and the more instantly terrible by reason of the invisibility of the damage.

The ship staggered: that is the only word. And almost at once her list sharply increased. The boy fell, and the woman. Otto lurched, and was brought up sharply by the damaged bulkhead on the other side of the gangway.

He pushed himself erect. The clumsy life-belt twisted on his body and beneath it, in its inner pocket, the oilskin package thrust a suddenly sharp edge into his ribs and thence his mind: Nils Jorgensen’s place was above-decks, seeking a boat.

“Come!” said Otto Falken to the woman, and pulled her to her feet.

The boy scrambled up. He still stated about the cabin. “Her life-belt,” he said. “Her life-belt.”

“Come now—quick!” said Otto—and saw that they were following him and made slow, staggering progress along the gangway which with every more dreadful moment tilted yet further, in a series of shaking, wallowing jerks, until they were forced, almost, to walk along the port-side bulkhead as if it were floor instead of wall. He heard a muffled cry from behind him, and turned and saw that the woman had fallen, her foot caught in a jagged-edged breach. The small, square figure of her son was bending over her, trying to pull her up, at first using only one hand while he carried the other awkwardly at its side; then, as Otto moved to help, using this one too he winced with a little hiss of indrawn breath, as he did so.

Otto picked up the woman. “Hold to me,” he said and thrust her lingers into his belt. He took the boy by the shoulder. “You go front,” he said. “In front.” As he spoke, he lifted the small hand which had caused the wincing. He did it quickly, turning it palm-up before its owner was aware of the action. There were ragged red cuts across it and, through the largest, bone shone whitely.

The boy closed his fingers quickly, glaring up at Otto with a frown.

Otto said: “Go now. In front. Quick!”

The child went—and they staggered on and came to the end of the gangway and a blast of heat so intense that they reeled back. The fire was playing freakish tricks, as fire on shipboard will, and now it was coming down at them. The companion above was a flame-filled mouth, cutting off all possibility of gaining the deck.