The False Faces Part 17

Yet the will to live persisted amazingly. Had Lanyard wished it he could not have ceased to swim, at least to keep afloat. Vaguely he wondered how people ever managed to commit suicide by drowning; it seemed to pa.s.s human power to resist that buoyancy which sustained one, to let go, let one's self go down. Impossible to conceive how that was ever done....

Why should he care to go on living?

No reading that riddle!...

On obscure impulse he gave up swimming, turned upon his back, floated face to the sky, derelict, resigning himself to the cradling arms of the sea.

The gradual, slow rocking of the swells soothed his pa.s.sion like a kindly opiate. The cold no more irked him, but seemed somehow strangely anodynous.

Imperturbably he envisaged death, without fear, without welcome. What must be, must....

For all that, life clutched at him with jealous hands. More than ever sleepy, before he slept that last, long sleep he must somehow solve this enigma, learn the reason why life continued so to allure his failing senses.

Athwart the drab texture of consciousness wild fancies played like heat lightning in a still midsummer night.

Death's countenance was kind.

That wide field of stars, drooping low and lifting away with rhythmic motion, would sometime dip swiftly down to the very sea itself and, swinging back, take with it his soul to some remote bourne....

The deeps were yielding up their mysteries. Past him a huge pale monster swept at furious pace, hissing grimly as it pa.s.sed, like some spectral Nemesis pursuing the _a.s.syrian_.

Indifferently he speculated concerning the reality of this phenomenon.

The heave of a swell enabled him to glance incuriously after the steamship.

She seemed smaller, less genuine than ever, a shadow shape that boasted visibility solely through that unearthly light on her after deck. Even that now had waned to a mere glimmer, the flicker of a candle lost in the immensities of that night-bound world of empty sky and empty ocean. Even as he that had been named Michael Lanyard was a lost light, a tiny flame that guttered toward its swift extinction....

Why live, when one might die and, dying, find endless rest?

Like a blazing thunderbolt one word rent the slumbrous web of sentience: _Ekstrom_!

Galvanised by the flood of hatred unpent by the syllables of that name, Lanyard began again to swim, flailing the water with frantic arms as if to win somewhither by the very violence of his efforts.

This the one cogent reason why he must not, could not, die....

Unjust to require him to give up life while that one lived. Unfair.... It must not be!...

Across the sea rolled a dull, brutish detonation. The swimmer, swung high on the bosom of a great swell, saw a vast sheet of fire raving heavenward from the _a.s.syrian_.

It vanished instantly.

When his dazzled vision cleared, he could see no more of the ship. He imagined a faint, wild rumour of panic voices, conjured up scenes of horror indescribable as that great fabric sank almost instantaneously, as if some gigantic hand plucked her under.

What had happened? Had the accomplices of the dead Baron von Harden set off an infernal machine aboard the vessel? In the name of reason, why? They had got what they sought, that accursed doc.u.ment, whatever it was, that page torn from the Book of Doom. Then why...?

And to what end had they exploded that light bomb on the after deck?

To make the _a.s.syrian_ a glaring target in the night--what else? A target for what?...

Of a sudden all rational mental processes were erased from Lanyard's consciousness. A wave of pure fear flooded him, body, mind, and soul. He began to struggle like a maniac, fighting the waters that hindered his flight from some hideous thing that was lifting up from the ocean's ooze to drag him down.

He heard a voice screaming thinly, and knew it was his own.

The impossible was happening to him, out there, alone and helpless on the face of the waters. A shape of horror was rising out of the deep to engorge him. He could feel distinctly the slow, irresistible heave of its bulk beneath him. His feet touched and slipped upon its horrible sleek flanks.

His most desperate efforts were all unavailing. He could not escape. The thing came up too rapidly. Following that first mad thrill of contact with it underfoot, he was lifted swiftly and irresistibly into the air. Almost instantly he was floundering in knee-deep waters that parted, cascading away on either hand. Then, elevated well above the sea, he slid and fell p.r.o.ne upon a slimy wet surface.

His clawing hands clutched something solid and substantial, an upright bar of metal.

Incredulously Lanyard pawed the body of the monster beneath him. His hands pa.s.sed over a riveted joint of metal plates. Looking up, he made out the truncated cone of a conning tower with its antennae-like periscope tubes stencilled black upon the soft purple of the star-strewn sky.

Slowly the truth came home: a submarine had risen beneath him. He lay upon its after deck, grasping a stanchion that supported the small raised bridge round the conning tower.

He sobbed a little in sheer hysteric grat.i.tude, that this miracle had been vouchsafed unto him, that he had thus been spared to live on against his hour with Ekstrom.

But when he sought to drag himself up to the bridge, he could not, he was too weak and faint. Ceasing to struggle, he rested in half stupour, panting.

With a harsh clang a hatch was thrown back. Rousing, Lanyard saw several figures emerge from the conning tower. Men uncouthly clothed in shapeless, shiny leather garments, straddled and stretched above him, filling their lungs with the sweet air. He tried to call to them, but evoked a mere rattle from his throat.

Two came to the edge of the bridge and stood immediately over him, fixing binoculars to their eyes, their voices quite audible.

A pang of despair shot through Lanyard when he heard them conferring together in the German tongue.

Death, then, was but a little delayed.

Thereafter he lay in dumb apathy, save that he shivered and his teeth chattered uncontrollably.

Through the torpor that rested like a black cloud upon his senses he caught broken phrases, s.n.a.t.c.hes of sentences:

"... _sinking fast ... struck square amidships ... broke her back_...."

"... _trouble with her boats. There goes one over_!..."

"... _fools jumping overboard like cattle_...."

"_What's that rocket? Do the swine want us to sh.e.l.l their boats_?"

"_Why not? They're asking for it_!"

One of the officers lowered his gla.s.ses and barked a series of sharp commands. The crew on deck leaped to attention. One leaned over the conning-tower hatch and shouted to his mates below. A hatch forward of the tower opened, and a quick-firing gun on a disappearing carriage swung smoothly and silently up from its lair.

The other officer, looking down, started violently.

"_Verdammt_! What's this?"

The first rejoined him. "Impossible!"

"Impossible or not--a man or a cadaver!"

"Have him up and see...."

By order, two of the crew dragged Lanyard up to the bridge, supporting him by main strength while the officers examined him.