Ruth Fielding Homeward Bound Part 7

Were they observed by the Huns? Could they wreak some serious damage upon the Zeppelin before their own presence-and their own peril-was apprehended by the crew of the great airs.h.i.+p?

CHAPTER VIII-AFLOAT

The _Admiral Pekhard_ nosed her way out of the port just as dusk fell.

She dropped her pilot off the masked light at the end of the last great American dock-a dock big enough to hold the _Leviathan_-and thereafter followed the stern lights of a destroyer. Thus she got into the roadstead, and thence into the open sea.

The work of the Allied and American navies at this time was such that not all s.h.i.+ps returning to America could be convoyed through the submarine zone. This s.h.i.+p on which Ruth Fielding had taken pa.s.sage for home was accompanied by the destroyer only for a few miles off Brest Harbor.

The pa.s.sengers, however, did not know this. They were kept off the open decks during the night, and before morning the _Admiral Pekhard_ was entirely out of sight of land, and out of sight of every other vessel as well. Therefore neither Ruth nor any other of the pa.s.sengers was additionally worried by the fact that the craft was quite unguarded.

The _Admiral Pekhard_ mounted a gun fore and aft, and the crews of these guns were under strict naval discipline. They were on watch, turn and turn about, all through the day and night for the submarines which, of course, were somewhere in these waters.

The _Admiral Pekhard_ was not a fast s.h.i.+p; but she was very comfortably furnished, well manned, and was said to be an even sailing vessel in stormy weather. She had been bearing wounded men back to England for months, but was now being sent to America to bring troops over to take the place of the wounded English fighters.

Ruth learned these few facts and some others at dinner that night. There were some wounded American and Canadian officers going home; but for the most part the pa.s.sengers in the first cabin were Red Cross workers, returning commissioners both military and civil, a group of Congressmen who had been getting first-hand information of war conditions.

Then there were a few people whom the girl could not exactly place. For instance, there was the woman who sat next to her at the dinner table.

She was not an old woman, but her short hair, brushed straight back over her ears like an Americanized Chinaman's, was streaked with gray. She was sallow, pale-lipped, and with a pair of very bright black eyes-snapping eyes, indeed. She wore her clothes as carelessly as she might have worn a suit of gunnysacking on a desert island. Her eyegla.s.ses were prominent, astride a more prominent nose. She was not uninteresting looking.

"As aggressive as a gargoyle," Ruth thought. "And almost as homely! Yet she surely possesses brains."

On her other hand at table Ruth found a kindly faced Red Cross officer of more than middle age, who offered her aid at a moment when a friend was appreciated. Ruth did very well with the oysters and soup; and she made out with the fish course. But when meat and vegetables and a salad came on, the girl had to be helped in preparing the food on her plate.

The black-eyed woman watched the girl of the Red Mill curiously, seeing her left arm bandaged.

"Hurt yourself?" she asked shortly, in rather a gruff tone.

"No," said Ruth simply. "I was hurt. I did not do it myself."

"Ah-ha!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the strange woman. "Are you literal, or merely smart?"

"I am only exact," Ruth told her.

"So! You did _not_ hurt yourself? How, then?" and she glanced significantly at the girl's bandaged arm.

"Why, do you know," the girl of the Red Mill said, flus.h.i.+ng a little, "there is a country called Germany, in Central Europe, and the German Kaiser and his people are attacking France and other countries. And one of the cheerful little tricks those Germans play is to send over bombing machines to bomb our hospitals. I happened to be working in a hospital they bombed."

"Ah-ha!" said the woman coolly. "Then you are merely smart, after all."

"No!" said Ruth, suddenly losing her vexation, for this person she decided was not quite responsible. "No. For, if I were really smart, I should have been so far behind the lines that the Hun would never have found me."

The black-eyed woman seemed to feel Ruth's implied scorn after all.

"Oh!" she said, resetting her eyegla.s.ses with both hands, "I have been in Paris all through the war."

"Oh, then you'd heard about it?" Ruth intimated. "Well!"

"I certainly know all about the war," said the woman shortly.

The girl of the Red Mill seldom felt antagonism toward people-even unpleasant people. But there was something about this woman that she found very annoying. She turned her bandaged shoulder to her, and gave her attention to the Red Cross officer.

Strangely enough, the queer-looking woman continued to put herself in Ruth's way. After dinner she sought her out in a corner of the saloon where Ruth was listening to the music. The windows of the saloon were shaded so that no light could get out; but it was quite cozy and cheerful therein.

"You are Miss Fielding, I see by the purser's list," said the curious person, staring at Ruth through her gla.s.ses.

"I have not the pleasure of knowing you," returned the girl of the Red Mill. "Can I do anything for you?"

"I am Irma Lentz. I have been studying in Paris. This war is a hateful thing. It has almost ruined my career. It has got so now that one cannot work in peace even in the Latin Quarter of the town. War, war, war! That is all one hears. I am going back to New York to see if I can find peace and quietness-where one may work without being bothered."

"You are--?"

"An artist. I have studied with some of the best painters in France. But I declare! even those teachers have closed their _ateliers_ and gone to war. I must, perforce, close my own studio and go back to America. And America is crude."

"Seems to me I have heard that said before," sniffed Ruth. "Although my acquaintance among artists has been small. Do you expect to find perfect peace and quietness in the United States?"

"I do not expect to find the disturbance that is rife in Paris," said Irma Lentz shortly. "This war is too unpopular in the United States for more than a certain cla.s.s of the people to be greatly disturbed over what is going on so far away from home."

Ruth looked at her amazedly. The artist seemed quite to believe what she said. Aside from some few pro-Germans whom she had heard talk before Ruth Fielding had left the United States, she had heard nothing like this. It was what the Germans themselves had believed-and wished to believe.

"I wonder where you got that, Miss Lentz," Ruth allowed herself to say in amazement.

"Got what?"

"The idea that the war-at least now we are in it-is unpopular at home.

You will discover your mistake. I understand that even in Was.h.i.+ngton Square they know we are fighting a war for democracy. You will find your friends of Greenwich Village-is that not the locality of New York you mean?-are very well aware that we are at war."

"Perfect nonsense!" snapped Irma Lentz, and she got up and flounced away.

"Now," thought the girl of the Red Mill, very much puzzled, "I wonder just what and who she is? And has she been in Paris all through the war and has not yet awakened to the seriousness of the situation? Then there is something fundamentally wrong with Irma Lentz."

She might not have given the strange woman much of her attention during the voyage, however, for Ruth did not like unpleasant people and there were so many others who were interesting, to say the least, on board the s.h.i.+p, if a little incident had not occurred early the next morning which both surprised Ruth and made her deeply suspicious of Irma Lentz.

The girl could not sleep very well because of pain in her shoulder and arm. Perhaps she had tried to use the arm more than she should. However, being unable to sleep, she rose at dawn and rang for the night stewardess. She had already won this woman's interest, and she helped Ruth dress. The girl left her stateroom and went on deck, which was free to the pa.s.sengers now.

As she pa.s.sed through a narrow way behind the forward deck-house on the main deck, she heard a sudden explosion of voices-a sharp, high voice and one deeper and more guttural. But the point that held Ruth Fielding's attention so quickly was that the language used was German!

There was no doubting that fact.

There certainly should be n.o.body using that language on this British s.h.i.+p carrying Americans to the United States! That was Ruth's first thought.

She walked quietly to the corner of the house and peered around it. The morning was still misty and there were few persons on deck save the gangs of cleaners. Backed against a backstay, and facing the point where the girl of the Red Mill stood, was Irma Lentz, in mackintosh and veil.

The strange woman was talking angrily with a barefooted sailor in working clothes. He was bareheaded as well as barefooted, and his coa.r.s.e s.h.i.+rt was open at the throat displaying a hairy chest. He possessed a mop of flaxen hair, and his countenance was too Teutonic of cast to be mistaken.

Besides, like the woman, he was speaking German in a most excited and angry fas.h.i.+on.