Scarcely more than twenty minutes could have passed since the vessel sank, but she had been struck late in the afternoon and the sun now slanted perilously near the horizon. Tim and the little nurse looked at it thoughtfully, but neither spoke. Only a slight pressure of their arms suggested that each believed it would never rise for them--or, rising, would look upon a sea of floating dead. Jeb had not noticed the sun. His face was lowered close to the planking of their frail refuge. The ocean had again become a thing of peace and beauty--and silence. Those who were on upturned boats had realized the impotency of screaming, and merely clung with dogged tenacity; those who had been too much lacerated to reach these places of imperfect shelter, had yielded to the cradling waves and were now asleep. Thus the minutes dragged. Then the sergeant gave a cry of consternation. "Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot! May I be shot for a spy, if 'tain't the submarine!" Little more than a hundred yards away a monster was rising from the sea. Jeb looked up just as the conning tower emerged with water rushing off it like small Niagaras. Then, on a line of its submerged length, the ocean seemed to heave, pressed upward by the long gray hull that now broke through. It arose majestically, sleek as a bathing seal, reflecting the westering sun like wet granite. Almost at once the man-hatch in the conning tower opened, two sailors bobbed out and drew respectfully aside as an officer climbed leisurely to deck. He stood awhile twisting his mustache, gazing at the overturned boats with their desperate crews; for the partially submerged box nearer by, and its three human atoms, he had not yet noticed. At sight of him the sergeant's temper flared. "Look!" he cried. "Look, Jeb!--look, me darlin'!--see for wanst in yer lives a murderin' sore dressed in the livery av a rotten master!" As the officer turned in their direction Tim shook his fist at him, this time becoming the incarnation of rage. "Turn yer ugly mug away!--turn it away, I tell ye, from a sight too blessed for yer dirty eyes to see!--ye cholera germ!--ye fester!--ye--ye----Oh, me darlin'," he wailed to the little nurse, "if ye'd but go deaf a minute whilst I tell 'im what's in me 'art!" And in disappointment he held his thumb to his nose, by this most desperate sign trying to express the insults his tongue could not utter. Jeb was trembling. "Don't make him mad, Tim," he implored. "He might kill us!" "The dirty coward can only kill wan thing, an' thot's me body, but me soul'll go on cussin' 'im till the ind av doom." He shook his fist again, becoming more derisive: "Look at his head, now! If 'tain't the shape av a rotten pear may I be shot for a spy!--mind ye how it slopes up to a p'int, both fore-and-aft, and amidships; the fat-jowled swine!"