"Well--what I say is," said another, "that ain't likely. How could a submarine do that--sink a ship like that?--she'd have to blow up inside to sink so quickly. Likely her engine exploded." Dick didn't stop to debate the power of the submarine, but quickly stepped in and called Ralph at the _Argus_ office in Sabinsport. "Hello, Ralph," he said. "I've just walked into Jo's Mills. There's an ugly report here of the sinking of a vessel with big loss of Americans--anything in it?" "Everything in it, the _Lusitania_ was torpedoed yesterday--she sank in a few minutes. There is a loss of twelve hundred lives reported, one hundred of them Americans." "My God!" exclaimed Dick. "Yes," replied Ralph, savagely, "my God!" and both men hung up. It was but five miles into Sabinsport, but Dick always thought of it as the longest and blackest five miles he ever walked. As one drew nearer the town, the valley and the river unfolded, giving glimpses of rare loveliness, but they were lost on him now, though he had been looking forward to them all the morning as a delightful finish to his tramp. The tormented world was again on his back--his mind was grappling with the awful possibilities in the news. This was no ordinary casualty of war--not a battle lost or won. This was not war, as war was understood. It was a new factor in the awful problem. It was something quite outside the code--a deliberate effort to scare the neutral world into giving up the sea code it had been working out with such pain through the ages--scaring them into admitting that atrocities it thought it had done away with were legitimate if you invented an engine of destruction which couldn't be used unless you abandoned the laws. It was a defiance not only of all codes, but a most impudent defiance of the stern warning of the United States. Dick's blood ran hot and furious as he thought of it. "It can't be passed. It means action. They'll have to retreat--or we'll have to fight--and they'll never retreat. It would be giving up half of what they think their strength," he said, with the conviction of one who knew his Germany--its confidence in itself, its contempt for non-military peoples, its sneering at all laws or practices that stood in the way of its will.