What an end to a bright
young life! Anything but think! One could only press on, for individual
lives and human suffering were of small moment here compared with the
portentous question whether the steel sides of the ship and the engines
would hold out.

"Shoot me; deliver me from my torture!" rang out the cry of the
lieutenant's dying friend behind him; and there before him, right
against the wall, lay the sailor Ralling, that fine chap from Maryland
who was one of the men who had won the gig-race at Newport News; now he
stared vacantly into space, his mouth covered with blood and foam. "Shot
in the lung!" thought Meade, hurrying on and trying, oh so hard, not to
think!

[Illustration: "It went up in a slanting direction and then, ... it
steered straight for the enemy's balloon...."]

The black water gurgled and splashed around his feet as he rushed on,
dashing with a hollow sound against one side of the passage when the
ship heeled over, only to be tossed back in a moment with equal force.

What was that?--Lieutenant Meade had reached the officers' mess--was it
music or were his ears playing him a trick? Meade opened the door and
thought at first he must be dreaming. There sat his friend and comrade,
Lieutenant Besser, at the piano, hammering wildly on the keys. That same
Johnny Besser who, on account of his theological predilections went by
the nickname of "The Reverend," and who could argue until long after
midnight over the most profound Biblical problems, that same Johnny
Besser, who was perpetually on the water-wagon. There he sat, banging
away as hard as he could on the piano! Meade rushed at him angrily and
seizing him by the arm cried: "Johnny, what are you doing here? Are you
crazy?"

Johnny took no notice of him whatever, but went on playing and began in
a strange uncanny voice to sing the old mariner's song:

"Tom Brown's mother she likes whisky in her tea,
As we go rolling home.
Glory, Glory Hallelujah."

Horror seized Meade, and he tried to pull Johnny away from the piano,
but the resistance offered by the poor fellow who had become mentally
deranged from sheer terror was too great, and he had to give up the
struggle.

From the outside came the din of battle. Meade threw the door of the
mess shut behind him, shivering with horror. Once more he heard the
strains of "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah," and then he hurried upstairs. He
kept the condition in which he had found Johnny to himself.