Part 5 (1/2)

CHAPTER IV

A STRUGGLE IN THE SEA

Hope rose in Zaidos' bosom. He gave a sigh of relief. The boat was only a couple of miles distant, and coming full steam ahead. Something b.u.mped heavily against Zaidos' shoulder. It was a dead soldier. A gaping water-soaked wound on his head sagged open, and told the story as plainly as words could do. He was supported by a life belt carelessly strapped around him. The body pressed against Zaidos, b.u.mping him gently as it moved in the wash of the sea.

Still holding Velo with his left arm, Zaidos unbuckled the single strap that held the life belt and the body, released, slipped down into the water and disappeared. Zaidos, treading water as hard as he could, next managed to get the belt around Velo and buckled it. He fastened it so high that Velo's head was supported well out of the water; and Zaidos let himself down in the water with a gasp of relief. He felt that he was good for hours now. Keeping a hand on the strap of the belt, he turned on his back and floated. The water was warm, there was a hot sun s.h.i.+ning, and with the Red Cross s.h.i.+p approaching, Zaidos felt that he was indeed lucky.

He felt no uneasiness about the Red Cross s.h.i.+p changing its direction; the sea about was full of wreckage and men swimming and clinging to spars and timbers. It was not as though he and Velo had been alone there in the sea. The Red Cross s.h.i.+p had no doubt seen the explosion and sinking of the transport. So Zaidos floated easily beside his unconscious companion, occasionally calling to some hardy swimmer who came near, and expecting soon to see the rescuing vessel approach.

Velo opened his eyes, felt the lap of the waves round his shoulders, and gave a convulsive leap out of the sea.

”Had a good nap?” asked Zaidos.

Velo groaned. ”I am going to die,” he said.

”Not just yet,” Zaidos a.s.sured him. ”I wish you would have a little more courage,” he said crossly. ”You are in the _greatest_ luck. The transport is gone, with all her officers and nearly all of the men. I don't suppose there are more than six or eight hundred afloat out of the three thousand on board. Look over there, Velo. There is a Red Cross s.h.i.+p coming along. She will pick us up, and then we will be all right.”

Velo looked eagerly and gave a cry of dismay.

”Oh, oh, _oh_!” he screamed. ”We are lost; we are lost!” He burst into tears.

Zaidos rolled over and looked.

When you are in the water, as every Boy Scout knows, every object afloat looks mountainous. A common rowboat looms up like a three master, and Zaidos, looking in the direction of the Red Cross s.h.i.+p, saw a couple of battles.h.i.+ps approaching, while a huge Zeppelin like a great bird of prey floated overhead. How many submarines were playing around beneath him, he could not guess. One thing was clear. They were in a position stranger than any story, madder than any dream. Floating there, almost exhausted in the sea, they were to be in the center of a sea fight. Velo still wept, and Zaidos himself felt a sob of excitement choke his throat.

”We are going to get it from both sides,” he remarked to his cousin.

”That Red Cross s.h.i.+p is trying to get out of range until this thing is over.”

”What is going to become of us?” cried Velo.

”Don't know!” said Zaidos. ”And I don't so much care. At least I don't mean to worry. I've watched a lot of poor swimmers go down just from exhaustion; and if we are not rescued, why, we just _won't_, that's all. I'll tell you one thing, though,” he said with sudden anger, ”if you don't brace up and stop making me listen to your whimpering, I am going to duck you again. I did it before when you were trying to drown us both and I am perfectly willing to do it again.

You had better brace up!”

Velo was silent, and Zaidos fixed his eyes on the most amazing sight that a Scout ever witnessed.

Suddenly a wild shot ripped across the water, skipped along twenty feet from them, plowed its way into the sea, then disappeared.

Velo screamed. Another shot followed so close that the wave from it rocked them. Zaidos watched the Zeppelin with fascinated eyes. It circled round and round, in an effort to get over the biggest s.h.i.+p. A shot leaped up at it, and missed. The Zeppelin rose a little, then returned to the attack. Another shot narrowly missed it; but at that instant a bomb dropped like a plummet. It was a close miss. Zaidos could see wood fly as it clipped the prow and exploded as it reached the sea, doing but little damage.

”Look! Look!” cried Velo.

Another battles.h.i.+p was coming, and another, until before them five great monsters battled. The Zeppelin returned to the attack, and Zaidos himself cried, ”Look! Look!” as a swift gleam of light across the water, on a line with his eyes, betrayed the lightning swift course of a torpedo. It struck the s.h.i.+p, and at the same moment the Zeppelin dropped an accurate bomb. There was a terrific explosion as the torpedo struck amids.h.i.+ps, a spurt of flame as the bomb scattered its inflammable gases over the decks, and fire burst out everywhere.

Another torpedo tore into the s.h.i.+p. Zaidos' eyes bulged as he watched, the monster s.h.i.+p flaming and roaring with repeated explosions, her own guns valiantly firing to the last. As she plunged nose-first into the sea, the boys could see the crew, like ants, pouring, leaping over the side, only to go down in the vast whirlpool made by the sinking vessel.

The Zeppelin now soared skyward, made a wide circle that took it almost out of sight, and returned to attack another s.h.i.+p. Then a strange thing happened. The upleaping shot from the battles.h.i.+p crossed the bomb from the Zeppelin in mid-air, and as the bomb exploded on the deck of the cruiser, the sh.e.l.l from her aeroplane gun hit the delicate body of the airs.h.i.+p and tore through it. As the Zeppelin came whirling down, turning over and over in the air, Zaidos could see the crew spilling out like little black pills out of a torn box. That they were men, human beings whirling to a dreadful death, did not occur to him.

He had lost all sense of human values in the terrible pageant before him.

It seemed like a picture show, only with the vivid colors of reality and the deafening noise of exploding sh.e.l.ls. Once they felt the submarine pa.s.s under them, so close that it made an eddy that pulled them toward the combating s.h.i.+ps. When it came up to release its dart, the boys were too intent on keeping themselves enough out of the sea wash to breathe, to see whether the torpedo struck or not. The excitement grew in intensity. Gradually the group of fighting s.h.i.+ps drew nearer the swimmers. They were not more than half a mile away.

Another great hulk went down. The Zeppelin, with broken wings wide spread, floated on the sea. They could scarcely see it except when a wave made by a falling sh.e.l.l lifted some of its delicate framework.