“Lieutenant Gerry Hull was in the water there,” she cried to them who took her in their arms. “Lieutenant Gerry Hull is”--she shouted to the next man who took her when, looking up, she saw his face. Silence--a marvelous stilling of the guns which had been resounding from fore and aft; a miraculous stopping of the frightful shock of the shells which had been bursting in the ship--enveloped Ruth. She did not know at first whether it was because some of her senses were gone; she could see Gerry Hull’s face, feel his arms holding her and the rhythm of his body as he stepped, carrying her; she could hear his voice and the voices of others close by; but all other sound and reverberation had ceased. “I was separated from you,” Gerry Hull was explaining to her. “I was coming back to try and get you out.” “I went down the way you fell,” she replied to him. “Then I saw a man in the sea. I thought he was you. I tried to get him.” She was silent for a few moments while he carried her; the miracle of stillness continued; but it was a great effort for her to speak. “I would have done it for anyone.” “I know you would,” he said to her. “You’ve seen Hubert?” she asked. “He’s not among the hurt,” Gerry answered. She was quite certain now that the stillness had continued so long that it could not be merely the interval between firing or between the arrival of German shells. “What is it?” she asked him. “What is what, Cynthia Gail?” He called her whole name, as he knew it, as she had been calling his. “We’re not fighting,” she said. “We haven’t surrendered or--are we sinking?” “A destroyer’s come in sight,” he said. “It’s fighting one of the Huns. Listen!” He halted for an instant to let her hear the distant sound of guns. “I hear it,” she said. “We hit that U-boat, we think, so that it can’t submerge and has to keep fighting on the surface. The other’s submerged.” He brought her down a stairway into some large compartment, evidently below the water line; it seemed to have been a dining saloon for the steerage when the _Ribot_ had been regularly in the passenger trade; or perhaps it had been crews’ quarters. Now it was a hospital; cots had been laid out and those who had been injured by the shell fire had been brought there. They were a great many, it seemed to Ruth--thirty or forty. She had never seen so many suffering people, so many bandages, so much blood before. The ship’s surgeon was moving among them; women were there--quiet, calm, competent women. One had direction of the others and Ruth gazed at her for moments before she recognized Agnes Ertyle with her beautiful, sweet eyes become maturely stern and, at the same time, marvelously compassionate. If Ruth were a man, she must love that girl, she thought; love her now as never before. Ruth looked up to Gerry Hull to see his face when he spoke to Lady Agnes; he evidently witnessed no new marvel in her. He had seen her like this before, undoubtedly; that was why he loved her.