Jensen threw a cursory glance at the chart.
“You’ve brought the wrong one,” he said, snappily. “This doesn’t go far enough north. Look in the drawer there--there must be another one.”
“It is up in the wheelhouse, I think, Jensen,” demurred the young man, mildly.
“Yes--I know--but old Horst is certain to have a duplicate. Look in the drawer and see!” replied Jensen, with an impatience invited by the docility of his junior.
Lyngstrand obeyed, rummaging among a number of charts in the drawer of the locker under Captain Horst’s bunk.
“Here we are!” he cried at last, unrolling one of them. “This is a special one, evidently! Someone has marked it all over with red ink.”
Jensen snatched it from him, spread it out. In fact, as Lyngstrand said, it was marked in many places with little red-ink crosses, and under each was a date. Jensen ran his finger across it, stopped just off the south coast of Ireland.
“By all that’s wonderful!” he cried in a slow, long-drawn accent of amazement, raising his head and looking at his companion. “_He has marked our wreck!_ Look!--Fifty-fifty-five North, Nine-fourteen West--and there’s the date under it 20/9/18!”
“Then all those other crosses----?” queried Lyngstrand, in a voice of puzzled interest.
“They must be---- Wait a minute!” He compared some of them with the indications on his list. “Yes! They are wrecks, too--all torpedoed ships--look! this and this and this are marked on the chart! There are others not marked--but there are many more marks than there are ships on our list. They must be all torpedoed ships!”
“But why?” asked Lyngstrand. “Why has he got them all marked like this?--Where did he get this chart, I wonder?”
Jensen glanced to the bottom of the sheet.
“_This is a German chart!_” he exclaimed.
“German----!” he began, and stopped. They looked into each other’s eyes in a long moment when suspicion defined itself as almost certitude. For that moment they forgot the sickly rolling of the ship threshing and wallowing on her way to one of those tragic little red crosses. They forgot everything except the slowly dawning possible corollaries of this discovery.
Before either could utter another word, the lee door of the charthouse opened and Captain Horst stood framed in the entrance. He glared across at them, his face livid with a sudden anger, his eyes blazing. Then, with a scarcely articulate but vehemently muttered oath, he sprang across the little room, snatched the chart from the table, thrust it into the drawer, locked it up and put the key in his pocket. He turned and scowled at them in a silence which they were too awed to break. His eyes, fiercely blue, seemed to search into their very souls. Theirs dropped under the intolerable scrutiny. He uttered an exclamation of angry contempt and, without further speech, walked out of the charthouse.