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All the time the lifeboats had been pulling away from the danger of the sinking
liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my lungs, they either did not hear my
appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained
some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We
were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few yards,
neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly about for
something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point at which the
liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled
reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser of water in
which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and the flotsam of
a liner's deck leaped high above the surface of the sea--a watery column
momentarily marking the grave of another ship in this greatest cemetery of the
seas.
When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to
spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial
enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the
area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow
foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with
a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by
a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other
way can I account for its having leaped so far out of the water--a beneficent
circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of another far dearer to
me than my own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of the fact that a
fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped that day; for
because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I never should have
known; I have met and loved her. At least I have had that great happiness in life;
nor can Caspak, with all her horrors, expunge that which has been.
So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat
hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been dragged--
sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above the waves,
and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant and safe.
It did not take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to comparative
safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and desolation which
surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which floated the
pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless lifebelts. Some
were torn and mangled; others lay rolling quietly to the motion of the sea, their
countenances composed and peaceful; others were set in hideous lines of agony
or horror. Close to the boat's side floated the figure of a girl. Her face was turned
upward, held above the surface by her life-belt, and was framed in a floating
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