Sidney and Raymond rushed up the companionway to the deck and began to
buckle on the life-preservers, which were still lying where they had
been placed. Captain Foster had preceded the boys and was directing the
lowering of a boat, but the tackle had jammed, and the boat hung in the
air from the davits.
All the small force of men gathered on deck, including the engineers
on duty, whom the captain had summoned through the speaking tube. It
had been barely a minute since the explosion, but the Princess Mary
was rapidly settling forward. Three or four of the men still struggled
with the boat, which obstinately refused to descend to the water, while
others were cutting the lashings of a life-raft on deck. But the bows
of the ship were already awash, and some of the oil tanks must have
burst and let their contents out, for the stern rose high in air.
“Let everything go,” ordered Captain Foster, when he saw the desperate
condition of the vessel, “and jump, as far out from the ship as you
can.”
“Are you ready, Ray?” And Sidney’s voice shook a little. “Let’s keep
together if we can.”
There was no time, however, for any one to jump. With not even a quiver
the Princess Mary dove head first into the deep. The waters sucked down
after her with a strong pull, and then met with a surge overhead.
When Sidney realized that they would have no chance to leap for safety,
he tried to grasp his brother, but the suddenly tilting deck threw him
against the side of the companionway, where he seized the edge of the
opening, and held fast with desperate energy.
For a moment he had a wild idea that only by maintaining his hold of
the ship could he be saved, and he clung tenaciously to the casing.
The water surged about him as he was dragged through it with terrific
force. By closing his mouth tightly he kept himself from strangling,
but the suction and the pressure were stupefying.
Then it flashed into his mind that he was being dragged to certain
death, instead of being saved. Instantly he let go. The speed of the
descending vessel had decreased somewhat with the depth reached, but
the relief of pressure, which had become agonizing, was heavenly.
For a few moments after Sidney relinquished his hold he hung wavering
in the wake of the plunging ship, which was still followed by the
eddying currents of water. Then the buoyancy of his body, together with
that of the life-preserver, shot him upward. Instinctively, too, he
aided that upward movement by his own effort, the well-directed effort
of a practiced swimmer.
Fortunately there was no wreckage floating at the spot where he reached
the surface, and what a blessed thing it was to breathe the air again!
The time he was being dragged down with the ship had been measured by
seconds, but it was quite long enough, when he was once more in the
free air, to make him feel that he had been restored to life.
Sidney’s presence of mind in keeping his mouth closed had prevented
the water from entering his lungs, so that he was able at once to
look around to see who else might be near him. His first thought was
of Raymond. Looking out over the water that was still agitated by the
sinking ship, at first there was nothing evident but confusion, for the
surface was thickly sprinkled with wreckage. There was every article
that had been loose on the ship’s deck, to which were added many pieces
of splintered and shattered planking that had been torn from the
vessel’s bottom by the explosion.
Sidney supported himself by treading water, and raising himself high,
gazed about him. He saw here and there amidst the flotsam the head of
a man who was clinging to some piece of wood. Presently, away on the
other side of the circle of waste he saw his brother.
“O--h, Ray!” he called.
Raymond, also, was intently examining the surface of the water, and
immediately he distinguished Sidney.
“I’ll swim over there, Ray,” called Sidney when he saw that he was
observed.
There was no wind, and the waves and swells caused by the destruction
and the sinking of the Princess Mary were beginning to subside. So it
was not difficult for Sidney to swim, though he was retarded somewhat
by the cork jacket that was buckled around him.
He had proceeded but a few strokes when he noticed, a little to one
side, the form of a man lying against a piece of plank, and he changed
his course to examine it. The man’s face was in the water, and Sidney,
turning it up, was shocked to find it was Captain Foster. There was a
bloody bruise extending across his forehead, and he was unconscious,
but Sidney thought he still lived.
“Oh, Ray,” Sidney called, “Captain Foster is hurt; come and help me.”
The other men who were floating in the wreckage heard the call, and
all hastened to the aid of their captain. There were the mate, a
sailor, and two engineers, all who were left of the ship’s company. Mr.
Wright was the first to reach them, and after examining Captain Foster
briefly, he declared,--
“He’s only stunned, sir, but we must get him out of the water, or he’ll
be chilled. You men,” he continued, turning to the others, while he
supported himself by a piece of plank, “get together all the good
pieces of timber you can find, and we’ll make a raft. I saw a coil of
rope just over there, and maybe you’ll find some more.”
The men, assisted by Sidney and Raymond, swam through the floating
débris, and collected all the pieces of wood that were large enough to
use. They also found several long pieces of rope. It was slow work,
and tedious, but fortunately all were good swimmers. As fast as they
brought the pieces in, pushing them before them to where Mr. Wright was
waiting with Captain Foster, the mate arranged them in some sort of
order. He tied fragments of about the same length and width together,
and then placed those couples consecutively and bound them with the
long ropes. There were two heavy hatch covers, each of which would
easily support a man, and that addition expedited the work greatly.
Finally the lumber was all collected and bound together. While not all
of it was yet assembled in the raft, enough of it was put together to
support several men. So the mate, who was anxious to get the captain
out of the water, climbed up on it and directed the men from there.
“Jack,” he said to the sailor, “you and Watson,” indicating one of the
engineers, “bring the captain here and we’ll lift him up.”
The mate had supported Captain Foster in the water by placing his arms
over a plank and securing them there with a bit of rope. The two men
unbound the lashing, and placing themselves one on each side of the
injured man, who was still unconscious, they floated him across the few
intervening yards of space to the raft.
“Now, let me get hold under his shoulders,” said Mr. Wright, “and you
men take hold of the raft with one hand and lift on the captain with
the other.”
In a few moments Captain Foster was lying stretched out on the raft,
and the mate turned to Sidney and Raymond.
“If you young gentlemen,” he said, “will climb up here and chafe the
captain’s hands, I’ll help the men and we’ll soon have the raft done.
Take off his shoes, too, and rub his feet till they’re warm and dry. He
must have been thrown against a timber when the ship plunged down, and
was unconscious when he struck the water. So there’ll be no water in
his lungs, and all you’ll have to do will be to get him warm. I wish we
had some brandy to give him, but we haven’t even got water.”
“No,” said Sidney, who had climbed up and was kneeling by the captain’s
side, “and Captain Foster didn’t have any breakfast this morning, and I
think he was so worried last night that he didn’t eat much dinner, so
he won’t be in good shape to get his strength back.”
“Did you young gentlemen have any breakfast?”
“No, we didn’t have any either. The explosion came just as we sat down
to the table.”
“That’s bad; we men ate a good meal. Well, we may not be kept here
long.”
When Mr. Wright and his men had bound together all of the lumber
which had been collected, they had a commodious, serviceable raft. It
consisted of a double tier of heavy timbers all through, and rode high
in the water, even when it carried all seven of the party.
The boys had worked faithfully over Captain Foster, but he still had
not recovered consciousness, though his body had become much warmer.
The sky was clear, and a bright sun had done quite as much as the boys’
vigorous rubbing to bring about that condition. Mr. Wright examined
the unconscious man more carefully than he had done at first, and was
quite sure that the skull had not been injured by the blow which he had
received.
“I don’t believe there is anything more we can do,” said the mate, “but
I think he will come to himself before long. We’d better all take off
our clothes and dry them in the sun. I ought to have taken off some of
the captain’s clothes; he would have warmed up quicker; I believe I’ll
do it now.”
He began to remove Captain Foster’s jacket, and as he stooped over him
to release an arm the captain opened his eyes.
“How many of the men were saved?” he asked.
“Three,” replied the mate.
“Who were they?”
“Jack, Watson, and Smith.”
“Thank God!” said the captain fervently; “they are three of the men
with families. And the passengers?”
“Both of them,” replied the mate.
“I’m glad of that. What are we on?”
“We built a raft,” said the mate, “from the wreckage.”
“You’re a capable man, Mr. Wright,” said the captain. “My head feels
pretty level now. I fancy I can sit up.” And he proceeded to do so.
Sidney and Raymond and the three men gathered around the captain and
expressed their delight at his recovery.
“Gee! captain,” exclaimed Raymond, “we’re glad to hear you talking.”
“And I’m glad to see you, my boy,” said the captain. “This is pretty
hard luck for you boys, just as you thought you were getting out.”
“Don’t think about us, captain,” said Sidney; “it’s you and your crew
who have met with hard luck.”
“Well,” said the captain, “we have to take it as a part of the day’s
work.”
“I hated awfully,” said Raymond, “to lose that fine rug that we packed
over the mountains for our mother, and my revolver, too.”
“You won’t need your revolver again,” said Captain Foster, “but if
we’re taken by the Austrians the rug might have come in handy. I only
hope that we’ll not be picked up by an Austrian boat.”
“What would they do with us?” asked Raymond.
“You boys would probably not be held, but the rest of us would be sent
to a detention camp. They would never let Englishmen get back home.”
“And not be released until the war is over?”
“I fancy not.”
“Gee!” said Raymond, “that would be tough. Why, the war may last a
month or two yet.”
“Yes,” said Captain Foster, “or a year or two.”
“Captain,” asked Raymond, “do you remember when the ship went down?”
“No, I do not,” replied Captain Foster. “When she made her first
plunge, I was thrown against the rail, and that was the last I knew.”
“I remember everything I did,” said Raymond, “but I didn’t go down very
far till I began to come up again.”
“The suction from a small boat like the Princess Mary is not very
great,” said the captain, “but if it had been a big liner, you wouldn’t
have come up, that is, not alive.”
“Then why didn’t the other men reach the surface too?” asked Sidney.
“Because they probably became entangled in some way and were held
down,” replied the captain. “Poor fellows! the sea is relentless, as
only those know who follow it.”
The outer clothing of the castaways, which they had removed, was become
quite dry in the sun, and they felt more cheerful. But while they were
glad of the warm sun at first, they soon saw the possibility of its
becoming too warm for comfort. Besides, the warmer they became the more
their minds turned to the thought of water, of which there was none.
The injury to Captain Foster’s head was wholly superficial, but it gave
him a very sanguinary appearance, for it could not be cleansed, and
there was no possible bandage for it except salt-soaked handkerchiefs.
The captain, however, soon felt quite like himself again, for, as he
said, he was altogether too tough to be permanently knocked out by
anything so trivial as a little blow on the head.
He noticed that what little breeze there was came from the east, and
that fleecy clouds were gathering in that quarter, indicating the
approach of a storm. He called the mate’s attention to that, and said
he felt uneasy about their condition if there should be a storm.
“I believe, Mr. Wright,” the captain finally suggested, “that we can
rig up a sail to help us toward the coast of Italy.”
“We don’t seem to have much to make a sail of, sir.”
“We could use our coats if we had any way to fasten them together.”
“There’s a coil of ratline-stuff, sir, that we fished out of the water,
and that I thought was too small to trust in making the raft.”
“That’s just the thing, Mr. Wright. Make holes along the edges of the
coats and tie them together with bits of the cord. Then pull out the
two longest sticks you can find in the top of the raft. Hoist those
sticks a little ways apart, jam the ends down between the timbers, and
spread the sail between them.”
All went to work with a will, the boys tying the coats together, and
the men getting out the sticks for masts and setting them in position.
Soon there was a curious patchwork quilt of a sail raised, but one
that offered a large surface to the breeze. Raymond stationed himself
at the edge of the raft, and trailing his hand in the water for a log,
announced gleefully,--
“We’re making two knots.”