As we pulled away from the side of the ship its receding terrace of lights stretched upward. The ship was slowly turning over. We were opposite that part occupied by the engine rooms. There was a tangle of oars, spars and rigging on the seat and considerable confusion before four of the big sweeps could be manned on either side of the boat.
The gibbering bullet-headed negro was pulling directly behind me and I turned to quiet him as his frantic reaches with his oar were hitting me in the back.
"Get away from her, get away from her," he kept repeating. "When the water hits her hot boilers she'll blow up, and there's just tons and tons of shrapnel in the hold."
His excitement spread to other members of the crew in the boat.
It was the give-way of nerve tension. It was bedlam and nightmare.
We rested on our oars, with all eyes on the still lighted Laconia. The torpedo had struck at 10.30 P. M. It was thirty minutes afterward that another dull thud, which was accompanied by a noticeable drop in the hulk, told its story of the second torpedo that the submarine had despatched through the engine room and the boat's vitals from a distance of two hundred yards.
We watched silently during the next minute, as the tiers of lights dimmed slowly from white to yellow, then a red, and nothing was left but the murky mourning of the night, which hung over all like a pall.
A mean, cheese-coloured crescent of a moon revealed one horn above a ragged bundle of clouds low in the distance. A rim of blackness settled around our little world, relieved only by general leering stars in the zenith, and where the Laconia's lights had shone there remained only the dim outlines of a blacker hulk standing out above the water like a jagged headland, silhouetted against the overcast sky.
The ship sank rapidly at the stern until at last its nose stood straight in the air. Then it slid silently down and out of sight like a piece of disappearing scenery in a panorama spectacle.
Boat No. 3 stood closest to the ship and rocked about in a perilous sea of clashing spars and wreckage. As our boat's crew steadied its head into the wind a black hulk, glistening wet and standing about eight feet above the surface of the water, approached slowly and came to a stop opposite the boat and not six feet from the side of it.
"What ship was dot?" The correct words in throaty English with a German accent came from the dark hulk, according to Chief Steward Ballyn's statement to me later.
"The Laconia," Ballyn answered.
"Vot?"
"The Laconia, Cunard Line," responded the steward.
"Vot did she weigh?" was the next question from the submarine.
"Eighteen thousand tons."
"Any passengers?"
"Seventy-three," replied Ballyn, "men, women, and children, some of them in this boat. She had over two hundred in the crew."
"Did she carry cargo?"
"Yes."
"Well, you'll be all right. The patrol will pick you up soon." And without further sound save for the almost silent fixing of the conning tower lid, the submarine moved off.
There was no assurance of an early pick-up, even tho the promise were from a German source, for the rest of the boats, whose occupants--if they felt and spoke like those in my boat--were more than mildly anxious about their plight and the prospects of rescue.
The fear of some of the boats crashing together produced a general inclination toward further separation on the part of all the little units of survivors, with the result that soon the small craft stretched out for several miles, all of them endeavouring to keep their heads in the wind.
And then we saw the first light--the first sign of help coming--the first searching glow of white brilliance, deep down on the sombre sides of the black pot of night that hung over us.
It was way over there--first a trembling quiver of silver against the blackness; then, drawing closer, it defined itself as a beckoning finger, altho still too far away yet to see our feeble efforts to attract it....
We pulled, pulled, lustily forgetting the strain and pain of innards torn and racked from pain, vomiting--oblivious of blistered hands and wet, half frozen feet.
Then a nodding of that finger of light--a happy, snapping, crap-shooting finger that seemed to say: "Come on, you men," like a dice-player wooing the bones--led us to believe that our lights had been seen. This was the fact, for immediately the coming vessel flashed on its green and red side-lights and we saw it was headed for our position.
"Come alongside port!" was megaphoned to us. And as fast as we could we swung under the stern, while a dozen flashlights blinked down to us and orders began to flow fast and thick.
