At least the two girls had their sense of humor. Maybe they hadn’t noticed the blood.
“Let’s get clear,” Flash said at once, seeing no officer in command. “We’ve got to push free of the ship. Find an oar and shove away, or row if you can!”
As their craft scraped along the still-moving hull, he was seized by a sudden dread that the boat just astern might land on top of them, or that tumbling passengers would fall in and sink them. Grabbing hold of the oar that had almost clubbed him as it fell, he shoved hard against the steel hull, trying to push off into the blood river. Others joined in, turning the bow of the boat out into the current
And sure enough, things were falling near them. Passengers, with or without life jackets, came skidding and rolling down the hull, taking their chances in the water. Others slid down ropes, leaving bloody strands and clawmarks on the hull as their ropes ran out and they tried in vain to slow themselves.
Then as he gazed upward, the embattled lifeboat that had wedged in the promenade deck began to slip free, bow-first, tumbling most of its six dozen passengers out. They slid down the ship’s side screaming and flailing into the sea.
With Lusitania’s forward progress, the hanging boat had passed well ahead of them by now, so that when the stern rope came free and the boat plummeted, it landed fifty feet forward, missing their craft but crushing many of the struggling passengers it had just dumped into the water.
“Row!” Flash called out, urging the distracted boat crew to make progress. “We’ve got to be well away from her when she sinks!”
Fumbling and finally getting his oar into a rowlock with Winnie’s help, he tugged on it along with her in the cramped space. As they did so, he could feel cold water sloshing around his ankles, probably seeping in through the boat’s seams that had been gouged by rivets or strained from the fall.
But there just behind them, vivid to the rowers facing astern, a greater menace loomed up. As the Lusitania’s hull rolled over to starboard its two portside propellers had emerged from the sea. They still turned, sluggishly but with tremendous force behind their twelve-foot-high blades. The inner, sternmost screw next to the rudder was almost completely out of the water, splashing down into the wake and churning up gouts of pinkish spray. And the outboard screw, positioned sixty feet forward along the sinking hull, was half-submerged and spinning like a water wheel, its coppery green blades slicing down every second like giant scythes. They threatened to cut any boat in half and, churning as they did, created a powerful suction.
While the rowers watched and toiled to get away, luckless swimmers were drawn into the hungry vortex to disappear with screams and sprays of red.
The boat’s crew pulled desperately at the four oars they had in the sea, men and women straining together, but their boat was filling with water and getting hard to row. Worse, Flash could see the Lusitania’s rudder mostly out of the water but tilted far over to starboard. While drifting forward at its crazed angle, the big ship was also turning, its stern swinging out directly toward them. They heard the churning of the screw grow louder and saw it come near. They watched the overturned boat from astern drift into the chaos, with a few pitiful survivors still clinging to it and pushing off too late.
With a terrible crunching sound, timbers, limbs, indescribable things churned upward in the red foam and disappeared. Facing astern as they rowed, they could see their fate before it reached them. It was inevitable.
“One thing I never thought I’d say,” Flash panted to Winnie as she rowed beside him.
“What’s that, darling?” she gasped in his ear.
“Thank God I don’t have my camera along.”
Whether it was a good joke or not, he knew it was his last.
At that moment, with a thunderous grinding and a symphony of tortured, groaning metal, the whole huge ship convulsed, sending off a wave that kicked them away from the hull. The giant screw before them still sliced the water, but they soon realized it was no longer propelling the ship forward. The great vessel had stopped.
“She’s grounded out,” someone in the boat cried. “The bow must have struck bottom.”
“Fine, then,” Flash said. “Let’s pull away quick before she settles.”
With the death-ship no longer bearing down on them, their oars began to bite. Although they were half-swamped, passengers went to work with hats and canvas bailing-buckets to lighten the boat. A few survivors in the water got near enough to cling to ropes or gunwales for dear life. The boat’s occupants had no heart to drive them off, but even so they made headway straining at the oars.
The rowers faced backward and so by necessity witnessed the last agonies of ship, and her passengers. Lusi’s hull was now submerged for most of its length, with the stern pointing up at a sharp angle. Desperate survivors climbed to the highest parts, crowding each other off the deck in places. Many jumped or slid into the water, some landing on top of others. One man tried to slide down a cable, but when it carried him over the high stern screw he lost a leg to the still-spinning blade, to plummet screaming into the red wake. Others on the forward decks simply stood and let the rising water sweep them off, with or without life jackets.
Flo and Hazel, tending to a pregnant woman they had fished out of the water, were both in tears.
“Miss Hildegard could still be back there,” Hazel said with a glance astern.
“Or maybe she found a boat,” Florence told her sister. “Maybe it’s even less leaky than this one!”
Their words made Flash remember Matt and Alma…while fighting to survive and save others, he hadn’t thought of them in, what, half an hour? Fifteen minutes? Ten? He could only hope they’d been as lucky as he had.
A few other boats were in the water, strung out in the long wake behind the doomed vessel. But most of those in sight appeared to have come from the starboard. That side could not be faring too well now, being so low down in the sea. As they watched, smokestack number three toppled away from them, trailing and lashing out its guy-wires to a faint accompaniment of shrieks.
Along the port side, the rear davits either hung empty or dangled shattered pieces of timber, shredded by the steel hull and rivets. One last lifeboat astern was loaded with people, still snug against the deck, waiting for the rising sea. But as they watched, a gunshot sounded, sharp and imperative over the cries. As if it had been a starter’s gun, the boat soon swung inboard like the rest and raced down the forty-degree slope of the deck, amid screams and diving bodies. At the end it of its slide it splashed into the rising waves, to disappear there without a trace.
That done, the great ship seemed to give up. With smoke and steam blasting up out of her ventilators, the sea rushing in and the stern portholes blowing out with loud pops from the pressure, she settled into the deep. A final explosion within sent steam billowing out of the stacks, cloaking the whole vessel in a blinding, scalding mist.
When the fog dissipated, Lusitania was gone. Her last great exhalation of foam and debris welled up from below, scattering human bodies on its swell.
Afterwards they found themselves on flat blue sea amid a vast field of wreckage and floating humanity both dead and alive, with life jackets and without. No ships were visible as yet, no blasts of boat whistles, just a few pitiful cries and the flailing arms of those trying to survive. Together they worked, rowing to pick up swimmers and bailing to keep their small craft afloat.
Chapter 50
Survivors
Even at full throttle with dive planes raised, the mini-sub took minutes to surface. Meanwhile Alma worked in the back to control Kroger’s bleeding. The spy’s strength seemed to be ebbing.
She appealed to Matt, “Can’t we go up any faster? Dirk needs fresh air.”
“Matt,” the spy called out, “try blowing out the ballast tanks, in case there’s water in them. Do you see the control there in front?”
“Blow ballast, aye-
aye,” Matt said, reaching out and twisting a valve. There came a rushing, bubbling sound and Alma felt a slight lift.
“Good, now we’ll make it to the surface.” Kroger lay gasping weakly as Matt turned off the valve. “You two young ones will, anyway.”
“Now Dirk,” Alma said, wiping the spy’s sweaty brow, “don’t talk like that. You’ll be fine.”
But she couldn’t help noticing that, as the sub tilted upward, the bilge water astern near the dynamo pooled red with her patient’s blood.
“I see a lifeboat up there,” Matt called out. “No oars or swimmers in the water, it’s just drifting. I’ll steer for it and hope they have room for three.”
“Fine,” Alma said. “Those boats have medical kits, don’t they?” Secretly, she was also desperate to escape this mini-sub before the power ran out, or the air. Good as it had been to them, it still felt like a stifling brass coffin.
As he peered through his portholes, Matt said, “I don’t see any other boats, just some floating debris. The ship kept going and may not have stopped.”
“They must be having an awful time up there. I hope the others are all right.”
“They should be okay. Flash is as smart and able as they come, and I told him to look after them.”
“Oh, good! I hope he can.” Alma took comfort from Matt’s words, even though she knew they meant little in such a catastrophe.
From Alma’s supporting arms, Dirk Kroger spoke up faintly. “Just look at the three of us, won’t you? We survived against the biggest odds, so far at least. Could your friends have faced anything worse?”
“You said it, Dirk,” Matt seconded. “Where there’s life, there’s hope. Speaking of which, we’re getting up near the boat. Still no sign of life there.”
“Better slow down, then,” Alma said, straining for a look. “We don’t want to ram them.”
“I’ll surface behind and steer up close.”
“We may frighten them,” Alma said. “They’ll think we’re the U-boat. I hope they don’t have guns to shoot at us.”
“Not likely,” Matt said. “At worst, they’ll throw up their hands and surrender.”
They stopped talking as the mini-sub broke the surface, and the light through the portholes dazzled them. Alma tried to leave Dirk in a comfortable position before she turned to help Matt.
By the time she got the hatch open and let in fresh sea air, Matt had brought the sub close alongside the boat. It seemed evident through the portholes that no one was aboard, and when she stuck her head out into daylight she was able to confirm it.
“It’s empty,” she said, leaning out and grabbing the side of the derelict. “Should I get in?”
“Yes. If you can, get me that rope there,” Matt said, looking out through the hatch beside her. “Maybe this one was knocked loose by the explosion,” he added as she climbed out into the partly-flooded boat and clambered over benches. “What a waste!”
“Well, we can use it. Maybe we could tow it along to pick up other passengers.” Dragging the mooring rope up out of the water, she tossed it over to Matt.
“It’s such a beautiful day!” she marveled, shading her eyes against the glare of sun and sea. And then she cried, “Oh, how dreadful!”
Before her, at the end of a mile-long trail of boats, wreckage, and human flotsam, was the Lusitania. Amid its haze of smoke and misery, the huge ship tilted downward, poised at a crazy angle for her last voyage into the depths. Even at this distance Alma could see the seething turmoil on deck, bodies plunging overboard, lifeboats caught and dragged under by toppling funnels and wires, with white puffs of explosions blowing up wreckage into the sky. Mercifully, she was too far off to hear the cries of pain and terror. But she could imagine.
“It’s terrible,” she told Matt as he popped up from the sub’s hatch. “What can we possibly do? I don’t see any oars in this boat,” she added, looking around.
“It looks bad,” he agreed, shading his eyes toward the spectacle. “But don’t forget about Kroger, here. We should get him up into the air before we lose him.”
“All right,” she said, moving back toward the sub. “If you can prop him up, I’ll pull him over into the boat—”
“Wait, what’s that?” From where he stood in the hatch, Matt pointed to a sudden turbulence in the water, something surging forward and rising from the deep.
A few dozen yards ahead, distracting them from the vision of the dying ship, a black wedge broke forth onto the sea’s surface. First the bow and conning tower emerged, and then the great length of hull heaved up, streaming off tons of water as it came, making their tethered boat and submarine knock violently together in the swell. On the stubby central tower was painted a red, flaring German Maltese Cross, and on the side of its prow the number 20.
“It’s the U-boat,” Alma gasped. “The same one that sunk us, it has to be!”
“Maybe they’re here to finish the job,” Matt said. “Or more likely, attack any rescue ships that show up.”
“Have they seen us, do you think? Will they take us captive?”
“A U-boat wouldn’t usually take prisoners, or rescue survivors either—unless they knew their spy was on board.” Matt bent down to call through the hatchway, “Dirk, your navy is here! Come on now, get up!” But in reply, Alma heard only a faint moan.
“Here they come, the Kaiser’s marines,” Matt said as he ducked down to get his spy friend.
Once the U-boat fully surfaced, its forward motion halted. Now hatches flew open, with men sprouting up in the conning tower and just astern, to run forward to the muzzled, tethered deck gun. For now, all of them seemed to be craning their necks or standing rapt to stare at the work they had wrought, the ruin of the great British liner.
“This could be bad,” Matt said, standing up in the hatch, breathless from his efforts to move the inert spy. “If we can’t get Kroger up here to yell at them in German, or give some secret sign, they might just ignore us. Or else open fire,” he added, mirroring Alma’s unspoken fear.
Even as he spoke, the leather-hatted officer in the tower hatchway began sweeping the horizon with his binoculars, stopping when he came to them. He shouted something, and others aboard turned to look. One of them pointed excitedly down at the lifeboat…or rather, at the floating mini-sub beside it. Responding to another barked command, the three men astern by the deck gun began unlimbering their heavy weapon and swinging it around.
“That does it,” Matt said, sinking down in the hatchway. “They’ve seen the sub, and it’s a threat. They think we’re armed. I’ll have to draw fire away from you and the boat.”
“No, Matt, wait,” Alma pleaded, grasping desperately at her lover’s shoulder as he knelt down in the hatch. “Just get in the boat and raise your hands. We’ll surrender, and it’ll be all right…”
“No time. They’re loading the gun. Get down!”
She turned and saw a crewman shove a shell into the breech as the long barrel swung around. Turning back, she fully intended to jump from the boat and dive in after Matt. But already he was pulling away, too far to leap, the sub’s wake quietly frothing and churning. She saw his hand reach up and wave a brief farewell before pulling the hatch cover shut.
In that moment the cannon-shot screamed overhead. Smiting the air, it thudded in her ears and made her drop to the benches in the rocking lifeboat. But the shell missed both her and the mini-sub, splashing in the water and raising a plume fifty yards away.
Meanwhile as she watched, the tiny copper craft surged forward gathering speed—ten, twenty, thirty feet ahead as it sank away out of sight in a froth of bubbles. Before her tears could come, it was gone.
On the deck of the U-boat, the gun crew tried to follow Matt’s course with their weapon, but didn’t fire again. Instead after a few moments, the crewman unloaded the breech. From the captain in his visor cap, a new order rang
out sharply. It sounded like a single word:
“Alarm!”
The alert sent crew members scrambling down the ladders. The deck gun swung back inboard, and the two gunners secured it and closed the hatch behind them. The big vessel was already moving forward, accelerating. Moments later it settled out of view once again, leaving only a distant white eddy on the sea’s surface.
So Matt had been right. With the mini-sub loose in the water, the U-boat’s crew didn’t feel safe sticking around. Had he foreseen this, she wondered, when he risked his life—and very possibly sacrificed Kroger’s—to save hers?
If so, and if the little sub could still maneuver, he might come back.
There was nothing more, no bubbles or underwater explosions. Looking toward the Irish coast, she saw that the Lusitania was gone too, her long fatal convulsion ended at last. No ships were visible on the vast surface of the sea, just wreckage, and some faint smoke trails near the coastline offering hope of rescue—but no other passengers in sight. The rest of the survivors, if any, must have been strewn farther out along the doomed ship’s course.
Fifteen Hundred Lost At Sea—the old Titanic headline from her youth came back to haunt her. She sat waiting, weeping, thinking of what she’d lost. Her parents, her home and childhood; her name, with half a lifetime of peace and innocence. The old America she’d known would be lost to her after this…and her new friends too, very possibly.
And now Matt, more and more surely as the long minutes dragged on. He had closed the hatch—she’d seen it—and not just sunk outright. But then, he must have flooded the ballast tanks to dive so fast, she was sure. She remembered Kroger’s warning. Did he have enough bottled air ever to reach the surface again?
It all was too much! How was she supposed to bear it, without going mad?
And yet she’d gained things, too. Precious things, that had already become permanent parts of her life. And she knew Matt would never want her to give up.
Her damp hair dangled in her face. It was still black; the seawater hadn’t taken out the color. Maybe her salt tears wouldn’t, either—but they might fill up the boat. Finding a canvas bucket, she began bailing.
Lusitania Lost Page 35