Part 11 (1/2)

Until the hour the party left New York for Philadelphia, the port of sail for the Red Cross s.h.i.+p, no candidate had been settled on by the Commissioner to head the supply unit.

”We shall find somebody. I have one person in mind right now who may be the very one. If so, this person will be s.h.i.+pped by a faster vessel and by another convoy than yours,” and he laughed. ”You may find your chief in Paris when you get there.”

Ruth wondered to herself if they really would get there. At this time the German submarines were sinking even the steams.h.i.+ps taking Red Cross workers and supplies across. The Huns had thrown over their last vestige of humanity.

The s.h.i.+p which carried the Red Cross units joined a squadron of other supply s.h.i.+ps outside Cape May. The guard s.h.i.+ps were a number of busy and fast sailing torpedo boat destroyers. They darted around the slower flotilla of merchant steams.h.i.+ps like ”lucky-bugs” on a millpond.

Ruth shared her outside cabin with a girl from Topeka, Kansas-an exceedingly blithe and boisterous young person.

”I never imagined there was so much water in the ocean!” declared this young woman, Clare Biggars. ”Look at it! Such a perfectly awful waste of it. If the ocean is just a means of communication between countries, it needn't be any wider than the Missouri River, need it?”

”I am glad the Atlantic is a good deal wider than that,” Ruth said seriously. ”The Kaiser and his armies would have been over in our country before this in that case.”

Clare chuckled. ”Lots of the farming people in my section are Germans, and three months ago they noised it abroad that New York had been attacked by submarines and flying machines and that a big army of their fellow-countrymen were landing in this country at a place called Montauk Point--”

”The end of Long Island,” interposed Ruth.

”And were going to march inland and conquer the country as they marched.

They would do to New York State just what they have done to Belgium and Northern France. It was thought, by their talk, that all the Germans around Topeka would rise and seize the banks and a.r.s.enals and all.”

”Why didn't they?” asked Ruth, much amused.

”Why,” said Clare, laughing, too, ”the police wouldn't let them.”

The German peril by sea, however, was not to be sneered at. As the fleet approached the coast of France it became evident that the officers of the Red Cross s.h.i.+p, as well as those of the convoy, were in much anxiety.

There seems no better way to safeguard the merchant s.h.i.+ps than for the destroyers to sail ahead and ”clear the way” for the unarmored vessels.

But a sharp submarine commander may spy the coming flotilla through his periscope, sink deep to allow the destroyers to pa.s.s over him, and then rise to the surface between the destroyers and the larger s.h.i.+ps and torpedo the latter before the naval vessels can attack the subsea boat.

For forty-eight hours none of the girls of the Red Cross supply unit had their clothing off or went to bed. They were advised to buckle on life preservers, and most of them remained on deck, watching for submarines.

It was scarcely possible to get them below for meals.

The strain of the situation was great. And yet it was more excitement over the possibility of being attacked than actual fear.

”What's the use of going across the pond at such a time if we're not even to see a periscope?” demanded Clare. ”My brother, Ben, who is coming over with the first expedition of the National Army, wagered me ten dollars I wouldn't know a periscope if I saw one. I'd like to earn that ten. Every little bit adds to what you've got, you know.”

It was not the sight of a submarine periscope that startled Ruth Fielding the evening of the next-to-the-last day of the voyage. It was something she heard as she leaned upon the port rail on the main deck, quite alone, looking off across the graying water.

Two people were behind her, and out of sight around the corner of the deckhouse. One was a man, with a voice that had a compelling bark.

Whether his companion was a man or a woman Ruth could not tell. But the voice she heard so distinctly began to rasp her nerves-and its familiarity troubled her, too.

Now and then she heard a word in English. Then, of a sudden, the man e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in German:

”The foolish ones! As though this boat would be torpedoed with us aboard! These Americans are crazy.”

Ruth wheeled and walked quickly down the deck to the corner of the house. She saw the speaker sitting in a deck chair beside another person who was so wrapped in deck rugs that she could not distinguish what he or she looked like.