Germans -- Foreign countries -- Fiction; Sisters -- Fiction; Twins -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Anna-Felicitas, attentive in her berth, felt a cold thrill rush down her
back. No sound came from the berth on the other side any more than
before the raid on it, and Anna-Rose returned quicker than she had gone.
She just stopped on the way to switch off the light, and then felt along
the edge of Anna-Felicitas's berth till she got to her head, and pulling
it near her by its left pigtail whispered with her mouth close to its
left ear, "Wide awake. Watching me all the time. Not a man. Fat."
And she crawled into her berth feeling unnerved.
CHAPTER V
The lady in the opposite berth was German, and so was the lady in the
berth above her. Their husbands were American, but that didn't make them
less German. Nothing ever makes a German less German, Anna-Rose
explained to Anna-Felicitas.
"Except," replied Anna-Felicitas, "a judicious dilution of their blood
by the right kind of mother."
"Yes," said Anna-Rose. "Only to be found in England."
This conversation didn't take place till the afternoon of the next day,
by which time Anna-Felicitas already knew about the human freight being
Germans, for one of their own submarines came after the _St. Luke_ and
no one was quite so loud in expression of terror and dislike as the two
Germans.
They demanded to be saved first, on the ground that they were Germans.
They repudiated their husbands, and said marriage was nothing compared
to how one had been born. The curtains of their berths, till then so
carefully closed, suddenly yawned open, and the berths gave up their
contents just as if, Anna-Felicitas remarked afterwards to Anna-Rose, it
was the resurrection and the berths were riven sepulchres chucking up
their dead.
This happened at ten o'clock the next morning when the _St. Luke_ was
pitching about off the southwest coast of Ireland. The twins, waking
about seven, found with a pained surprise that they were not where they
had been dreaming they were, in the sunlit garden at home playing
tennis happily if a little violently, but in a chilly yet stuffy place
that kept on tilting itself upside down. They lay listening to the
groans coming from the opposite berths, and uneasily wondering how long
it would be before they too began to groan. Anna-Rose raised her head
once with the intention of asking if she could help at all, but dropped
it back again on to the pillow and shut her eyes tight and lay as quiet
as the ship would let her. Anna-Felicitas didn't even raise her head,
she felt so very uncomfortable.
At eight o'clock the stewardess looked in--the same stewardess, they
languidly noted, with whom already they had had two encounters, for it
happened that this was one of the cabins she attended to--and said that
if anybody wanted breakfast they had better be quick or it would be
over.
"Breakfast!" cried the top berth opposite in a heart-rending tone; and
instantly was sick.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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