All that afternoon our six surviving boats drifted within sight of each
other. When darkness fell large yellow lanterns were lit, and from time
to time Bengal lights flared and fell. It looked like a regatta held on
the River Styx, in Hell. The sailors had exhausted themselves rowing,
so the improvised sails were set. The boat-loads of survivors had run
the gamut of every emotion. They were now mere stocks of insensibility,
numb, dumb, and inert.
At six in the afternoon a boat just behind us began sending us signals
of distress. The men had taken off their shirts and were waving them
to us on oars. Our sailors objected to turning back, saying that both
boats would be sunk if we tried to relieve them. But Carlo Lamberti,
the chief engineer, with a quiet look in his blue eyes, with a rather
careless, engaging smile, which was habitual to him all the time,
presented his revolver--and we went back to see what was wrong.
We found that the boat had been struck by a shell and was leaking
badly. True enough, most of the people in it tried to make an immediate
stampede into our boat. But again Lamberti presented his eloquent
pistol and his quiet smile, and with order and precision we took aboard
the wounded, the women, and children. Then the leaky craft was tied
to our stern and the men left were easily able to keep it afloat by
bailing.
"We'll save you, or go down with you!" Lamberti reassured them. This
chief engineer was the only man who showed signal bravery.
One of the first of the wounded rescued from the leaky boat was my
former companion, the Marquis Serra Cassano. He did not wish to join
in the incipient stampede. With four toes of his foot shot away, he
rose limpingly to assist the other wounded into our boat first, before
he himself came in. Then with an air of pathetic aristocracy he seated
himself by me, and wanted to know if any one had a cigaret to spare. We
had four cigarets on the boat. The men took turns puffing them.
A frantic mother had dropped her baby in the water. I jumped out and
rescued it. Later on, she got separated from it, and I had it in my
charge for several days--but that is not in the present story.
We kept close watch on each other's boats till nightfall. As the other
five would appear and disappear, we would be alternately cheered and
frightened.
It must have been nearly midnight when one of our sailors cried out
that he saw a ship's light. But for a long while nothing appeared
but thin threads of light that filtered through the fog. After some
discussion as to whether it might not be an enemy craft, we approached
the direction of the light, till it burst on us in a powerful,
searching blaze. And we discerned the other boats converging toward it,
mere moving yellow splurges in the gloom.
The ship that was rescuing us was a French mine layer, the _Pluton_. It
was hellish-looking, as it beetled over us, but none the less it looked
like heaven, too!
And now our boat-loads of survivors were close together, and suddenly
everybody grew voluble and chatty. We shouted across the water to each
other. I even heard a voice singing. We were saved! We were saved!