The roll of the passengers ran in my mind and the catalogue of the loot, as I watched the bombing biplanes descend. They flew in straight for the ship and from below the first plane in line, a bomb was released.
Down and looping slightly forward, the bomb dropped and struck the water beside the ship. It dotted the sea with a spot of white; the white mightily erupted and upheaved. I watched the water no longer. I stared at the ship.
Its lights were out. That, I saw, before a saw it stagger. It swayed, swung and lurched to the right. The terrific shock of the ex—plosion first had registered on the electrical installation; then seams opened, the engines stopped, steering was smashed. Momentum only bore the Wotan on. With the lights, the radio likely had been wrecked; it could send no call for help, no appeal to the shore.
From my height overhead, I could see on the sky-deck only little specks appearing, clustering and scattering and clustering thicker as more pushed up from below—passengers they were, I knew; people in pandemonium scrambling and screaming for the boats.
Yet I saw, too, that discipline survived among the crew. Below, electricians worked at the lights and, beyond doubt, also at the radio; for the lights flashed on.
Instantly another bomb went down on the other side. It burst and lights went out and stayed out. The specks on the sky-deck shook and scattered at the shock like little shot on a tray which is tapped. The helplessness of the ship had passed beyond Bane's boast. If he had miscalculated, his error had been in the overuse of his power; the ship might not remain afloat long enough to be looted.
Those clustering, scrambling specks about the boats on the sky-deck—those specks which were men and women and children—proclaimed that the passengers were sure that the ship was sinking.
Far away, beyond sight from the Wotan, I saw a steamer; in a different direction, another; a third. None was near enough for quick aid; and I know that none had been summoned. If one blundered up, a bomb from a biplane would wreck it too. No aid could come from the water. I looked about the air.
A plane appeared from the direction of land and already, as I looked at it, I was jerked about to meet it. Kinvarra, behind me, swung his plane toward it, too, and we flew at it together. He sent me ahead of him, in the position in which I was most easily guided, and I flew for the approaching plane head on.
The strange airplane flew, curious only, not yet suspicious. He hardly had time to become suspicious, that pilot. Far away he had sighted a fleet of airplanes over a ship and he wondered what they were doing; then we were at him.
I was at him, first—I with no power to pilot, with no hand upon any control. For all purposes, I might have been an effigy in the pilot's pit with a machine-gun before me. I could do nothing to save the other plane—or myself, if we smashed.
I knew that sometimes, as when Pete had been knocked out of the sky, the automatic monoplane had held to the air; but, in spite of its special strengthening, this must have been accident, mostly. I could not expect to stay up, if we smashed. Kinvarra could not expect me to.
Not that I imagined he cared what happened to me. He was making me a part of a missile hurled at the curious airplane. No; he was making me, instead, a dummy machine-gunner. For the gun in front of me suddenly clacked; and the curious airplane, approaching, dove to the right.
For a few seconds, while I pointed at nothing, the machine-gun before me continued to fire. Then Kinvarra turned it off. He turned off, indeed, all control of me; for I had the sensation, as yesterday, of flying helpless and without guidance at all. Kinvarra had let me go, forgotten me while he dived after the other airplane. He shot it down and flattened his own flight. For a few seconds more, while he watched it and I watched him straining in my straps to make him remember me, he let me fly without control; then I felt him returning attention to me; control caught me; and I sank in my straps, sweating. Suppose the strange, inquiring machine had been a fighting plane and shot Kinvarra down!
It had borne no arms at all; it merely had blundered by to see what was going on and had been shot down, therefore, like a bystander witnessing a crime in a street.
Kinvarra was swinging me and himself back toward the ship. Above it, three biplanes, with their bombs like great evil eggs below them, steadily circled; higher, circled the six machines of Bane's immediate command. The other six of our squadron clung to the ceiling. The fourth bomb-bearer I did not see. I scanned the water about the Wotan.
The little boats, speckled with thick clusters of dots which were men, women and children, were being launched on the left side; for the ship, in settling, listed to the left. It listed so far, indeed, that launching appeared to be impossible on the right; at least, on that side no boats reached the water. I could see, on the sky-deck, the scrambling specks trying to push starboard boats over to port to be dropped from the davits.
Now I discovered the missing biplane on the water beside the sinking Wotan, on the right. The biplane had no bombs now; it had been lightened and become a cargo carrier, capable of taking on two tons dead weight; so it was alongside, demanding—undoubtedly—the jewels and platinum and the thousands of pounds of bullion gold.
The ship seemed to refuse or delay the delivery of it. Perhaps, in the panic, someone attacked the biplane's crew; for a signal went from the biplane on the water to the bombers in the air. And one of the evil eggs went down.
Not so near the ship; not so near as the first two. Perhaps some mite of mercy moved the hand releasing that third ton of TNT; perhaps the hand considered solely that it must not too greatly hasten the sinking of the ship. The bomb splashed and burst to the left of the Wotan, on the opposite side from the biplane on the water, on the same side as the little boats which were launched all acluster with the specks which were men and women and children fleeing the ship.
I watched the wave, from the burst of the bomb, sweep upon them; I watched it toss and swamp them and smash them against the flank of the ship. I watched, wrenching at my wrists in the clamps binding me; and, watching helpless to move a hand, I thought of Helen Lacey, in some airplane below there with Bane, also watching and seeing the little boats, crowded with specks, become boat bottoms and the specks bestrew the sea. In some way like me, she was held, I supposed—held and shown what I had seen and was to see.
The ship and all its people utterly at Bane's mercy, as he had boasted. With the roar of the airscrew, his boast rang in my head: "How they heap up wealth which they can not possibly defend from me! How they organize and superorganize themselves to make themselves safe, and then make airplanes and TNT and—me!"
In one of those airplanes below me, he sat staring down at those specks struggling in the sea; and triumph throbbed in his broken brain—triumph as he displayed his power to her and to Pete and tome. For I knew now that part of his purpose with us was to show us his words made true. Before us, he had boasted; before us, he would spread the proof.
Kinvarra, Donley and the rest—pirates in soul—held no concern with this. But no more mercy moved them; they were out for business; and their business was to rob the ship. So like bandits blowing a train from a trestle to despoil an express car, they would kill without pity for their purposes.
From the left of the sinking ship, little boats again dropped into the water—little boats covered with specks which were people who had seen, beyond doubt, the fate of the first boats but had no other choice except to stay on a sinking ship.
As well be in the little boats as aboard the Wotan, if another bomb went down.
I strained and squirmed in my manacles.
The sun arose; and in the clear light, I stared at the steel clamp binding my hands to the dummy wheel. Three numerals confronted me in tiny figures marked into the steel: 7—15—10. A series of figures ran round the bands of the three circlets of steel which formed the fastening of my clamps. It was a combination circlet lock. The numerals in the napkin leaped with full meaning from my mind: 18—35—21.
I could not twist my fingers far enough to touch the circlets but I could bend and catch them in my teeth. I had to straighten and see how far I had revolved each band; and after fixing the first at 18, I turned it away twice before I fixed also the second at 35; and the last was the hardest; but I got the three figures in line—and was free.
My hands were free, that was; but I could touch no control. They were in front of me in the pit for the pilot who had taken me into the air and had leaped. I unbuckled the straps over my shoulders—and Kinvarra saw me. He saw that my hands were free; but he still had control of the plane.
Instantly he flung me forward, throwing me into a dive with engine on full. His idea, when I surprised him, was to crash me at full speed into the sea. If he had thought, at that first second, to overturn me, he'd have flung me out; for I had thrown off the straps so I could climb into the forward pit. But he did not think, at once, about tipping me out; he thought of crashing me into the sea and so he gave me seconds to scramble into that forward pit and grab the controls.
I could feel, as I shut off the engine and pulled on the elevators, that too late he was trying something else; he was trying to overturn me. Under my hands I felt the tug of the radio effort. But it was no match for my muscles, I flattened my flight and was free.