CHAPTER XVII

NED WONDERS

When the crash had come Ned Slade felt himself thrown back against a deck stanchion, which he grasped desperately. In the instant of the collision, or so immediately following it as to make it seem simultaneous, he had observed a big hole torn in the side of the _Sherman_.

Stunned and shaken, he clung to the stanchion while all about him were confused shouts and orders and the rushing to and fro of many feet.

Almost as if in a dream, Ned saw the dark shape that had smashed into the troopship slowly back away--pull itself out of the great gash that had been cut. Then the fog swallowed it up.

He had slid to the deck after being hurled against the stanchion, and now he pulled himself to his feet again. As he did so he saw himself surrounded by a number of officers and men who had not been standing near him when the crash came. They looked from Ned to the hole in the side of the transport, and then out into the fog.

“What was it?” some one asked.

“I--I don’t know,” confusedly murmured Ned. And then it occurred to him that he did know--that he had seen exactly what had happened. So he answered: “A steamer crashed into us. She’s out there!”

He pointed to the mist that was thicker than ever.

“What ship was it?”

“Did you see the name?”

“Why doesn’t she stand by and give assistance?”

“I didn’t notice what the name was,” he managed to answer. “She just crashed into us--right here--and then she backed out.” He pointed to the gaping hole.

“Queer she backed out again,” commented a ship’s officer. “She might better have held her nose in the hole. That is, if it’s below the water line. But it isn’t,” he added quickly, as he leaned over the rail to take an observation. “We’re safe, so far. The lowest part of the hole is above the water line. But why doesn’t she let us know who she is? Why doesn’t she signal?”

It was queer, the absolute absence of sound from the other craft. Except for that gaping hole, it was as though she had been a figment of the imagination.

“She doesn’t whistle,” said the officer, who had looked over the side, “and I don’t hear any shouting. Surely she’s still near enough for us to hear from her. Are you sure it was a vessel?” he asked Ned. “Who else was here with you at the time?”

That question gave Ned a shock. That was it! Who had been with him at the time?

Why of course Jerry, Bob and Professor Snodgrass. And there was some one else--the sailor from whose person the little scientist had been about to remove a bug. It all came back to Ned now.

“Are you sure it was a vessel?” the officer asked again. “It may have been an iceberg. I’ve been bumped by them more than once.”

“It was a vessel,” answered Ned, and his mind was struggling with two matters. One was to answer the questions put to him, and the other was to try to think what had become of Bob, Jerry and the professor. He was confusing things.

“It was a vessel,” he went on. “I could see the camouflage paint on her. She slammed right into us and then backed off.”

“That’s queer,” murmured the officer. “If she was under steam she could blow her whistle, and even if she was disabled, as we are, she could ring a bell. But there isn’t a sound.”

“It must have been an iceberg,” declared another officer. “That would account for everything--even the silence.”

“It wasn’t an iceberg!” declared Ned. “I saw the camouflage paint. And look! You can see where some of it is scraped off on the broken end of our rail.”

He pointed to a jagged timber. It was true. Amid the splinters were flecks of blue and white paint.

“He’s right!” assented the first officer. “Besides, if it was an iceberg there’d be chunks of it on our decks now. And there isn’t a cubic inch. It was another ship!”

“But what kind?” cried several. “Why doesn’t she signal us and see if she can help?”

The officer had an answer ready for that question. He had not sailed the seven seas without knowing something of the mysteries of the vast places.

“A derelict,” he said.

“A derelict!” came the chorus. Then they understood.

Then came a barrage of questions, chief among them being:

“How could an abandoned derelict back away?”

“She probably didn’t,” the first officer said. “The shock of the collision probably separated us, and a stray current did the rest. I only hope she keeps away from us!”

The first excitement following the crash having passed, it remained to make certain just how badly damaged the _Sherman_ was and to ascertain the number of her crew and passengers who had been injured.

A hasty examination disclosed the fact that the hole in the side was well above the water line. Except in the event of a storm the transport would not leak. And, even in that case, the flooding of one more compartment would not be fatal.

In regard to the personal damage, though, the troopship had not come off so well. Several had been killed when the prow of the derelict had bit into the _Sherman’s_ side, for several decks were involved in the damage done, and all along the rails, at the point of the crash, men had been standing. Doctors and nurses found themselves with many new casual cases to look after, as well as those with which they had started out. The dead, of course, were beyond help, and their poor, maimed bodies were tenderly laid aside. There were some of the injured whose recovery was in doubt, but others were only slightly hurt.

But military discipline, added to that of the naval officers, soon brought comparative order out of chaos, and then, or even before, boats were lowered to pick up any who might have been tossed by the collision into the sea.

One or two of these were picked up floating near the _Sherman_, and some had been hurt.

Just how many were missing could not be ascertained until the lists were gone over. But Ned lost no time after a hasty survey of those picked up in telling that Jerry, Bob and Professor Snodgrass, all of whom had been talking with him a moment before the crash, were not to be found.

“We’ll have a thorough search made,” said the ship’s captain, when Ned’s story was repeated. “If necessary I’ll keep boats cruising about all night.”

And he did. Sailors, marines, and soldiers formed searching parties in lifeboats, but they were handicapped by the fog. They dared not go far away from the _Sherman_ for fear of being lost themselves, and their shouts brought no response. Some floating wreckage was picked up, part of it from the troopship and some from the unknown derelict. “Unknown” because nothing that was found afloat after the crash disclosed her identity.

“But what has become of Jerry, Bob and the professor?” wondered Ned. “They were with me. Their bodies are not among the dead--I’m thankful for that--nor are they in the list of wounded. They weren’t picked up by the boats. But where are they?”

And as Ned wondered and wondered the fearful conviction was borne to him that his three friends must have been injured or killed by the crash and have been flung into the sea, their bodies at once sinking.