Oddly awry she hung, driven slowly eastward by the wind. Her rudder
was burned clean off; her stern, warped, reeking with white fumes that
drifted on the late afternoon air told of the fury that had blazed
about her. Flames no longer roared away; but the teeth of their
consuming rage had bitten deep. Where the aft observation pit had
been, now only a twisted net of metal-work remained, with all the
plate-glass melted and cracked away. The body of Gorlitz, trapped
there, had mercifully fallen into the sea. That ghastly thing, at any
rate, no longer remained.
Four Legionaries were in the pilot-house: the Master, Bohannan,
Leclair, and "Captain Alden." For the most part, they held silence.
There was little for them to say. At length the major spoke.
"Still sagging down, eh?" he commented, his eyes on the needle of the
altimeter. "Some situation! Two men dead and others injured. Engines
crippled, propellers the same, and two floats so damaged we couldn't
stay on the surface if we came down. Well, by God!"
Leclair looked very grim.
"I regret only," said he in broken English, "that the stowaway escaped
us. Ah, _la belle execution_, if we had him now!"
The Master, at the starboard window, kept silence.
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