I stood with her in my arms surrounded by quiet and calm. Silenced was the whirr of airscrews, motor-roars, shots and bombs—except as they rang in my ears. The sea lapped in little wavelets upon the pontoons; externally it was like the morning she had spoken to Pete and me on the sea.
She roused and shuddered from no shock or sound without her. Her dark lashes lifted from the chalk of her cheek and her grey eyes gazed aghast into the sky and searched it only to see it empty. Her eyes, then, came to me. "He's killed?" she whispered to me.
Bane was this he. "He must be."
She stared at me, trying to think. "Your—friend?" she next asked.
"It's all over for him."
She jerked in my arms. "The specks in the sea," she said and twisted.
To the west, whence we had flown, distant Vs lettered the sky, new squadrons standing sentinel over the sinking ship. The funnels of liners lay on the horizon where the Wotan had been.
A bow pointed for us and a steamer stopped
