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Nor was the crossing anything like a vacation yachting cruise for the doughboys transported, packed as they were like sardines two and three decks below the waterline, brought up in shifts to catch a brief taste of fresh air, assailed at once by homesickness, seasickness, and fears of drowning like rats in a trap.
There are other buttons, of course. You can call up the edges of the Palisades, with their great sweep of river below, the seething, steaming city beyond; or, you can say "Hello!" to the Upper Harlem, with its house-boats and floating restaurants; or you can ring up Westchester and its picturesque waterline.
Scarcely had it touched the water when it burst into flame, and an intensely bright blaze of bluish-white light shot up, shattering the darkness, and illuminating the great ship from the waterline to the trucks of her masts. Instantly the deck of the liner was a scene of wild excitement. In a moment the man whom Roburoff had wounded was secured in the act of trying to throw himself overboard.
It was uneasy work, too, for although American sailors are as good at facing death as any men, they don't like the notion of death coming in on them, like a sneak below the waterline, and taking them in the dark while asleep.
An officer stepped on board. He was horrified at the scene of carnage which presented itself. The ship aloft was a wreck, the decks were a perfect shambles, wounded and dying men lay around in every position. The masts were gone, the ship was full of shot-holes, the water was rushing and gurgling in through the shot-holes below the waterline, flames were breaking out forward.
The mate's ball struck the water some twenty yards in front of her forefoot, and smashed her bow planking some three feet above the waterline; while the captain's struck her bulwark, tore along her deck, and went out astern, doing some damage by the way, I reckon. "We could see there was some confusion on board.
The gunboat which Flag-officer Foote was on, besides having been hit about sixty times, several of the shots passing through near the waterline, had a shot enter the pilot-house which killed the pilot, carried away the wheel and wounded the flag-officer himself. The tiller-ropes of another vessel were carried away and she, too, dropped helplessly back.
James pointed out a spot just below the waterline, and the man, standing a yard or two away, fired at it, the ball making a hole through both sides of the boat. Another shot was fired two or three inches higher, and the four holes were then plugged up with oakum. All was now in readiness for the attempt.
With no vision of objects far ahead dangers to be avoided destinations to be reached other ships to be spoken to by means other than by bodily contact a region of sunshine and cloud, of space, or perception, and of intelligence utterly inaccessible to parts below the waterline."
"There is need, truly," he said, "and all that may be done I will do. But yestermorn we found that we had sprung a plank or two just above the waterline, as we were in a bad berth for shelter. I made shift to get the ship to Tenby, but on one tack she leaks like a basket, and she must be repaired.
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