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Updated: June 18, 2025
I had been appointed one of provo N.C.O.'s, and my duty was to see that everybody was supplied with a lifebelt, wear it at all times except when going to bed, and then they were ordered to have them at hand in case of emergency. Although some of the people obeyed the instructions to the letter, even going so far as to sleep in them, many others neglected the order.
Going upstairs with other passengers, no one ran a step or seemed alarmed, we met two ladies coming down: one seized me by the arm and said, "Oh! I have no lifebelt; will you come down to my cabin and help me to find it?"
"What with boat drill three times a day, and lifebelt parade going on all the time on the deck, one doesn't get a chance to forget that we are liable to get a torpedo in our side at any moment." "Oh, these little gnats of Uncle Sam's will look after us!" a more cheerful confrere observed. "Come into the smoking room and I'll buy you a drink."
Thomson stood up for a moment and looked around. Then he turned to Geraldine. "Look here," he said, "there'll be plenty of craft around to pick us up. This thing can't sink. Keep the lifebelt on and get your arms through the belt I have tied on to the table, so. That's right. Now come over to the side." "You're not going to jump overboard?" she cried.
Prompt obedience caused the ship to sheer off a little, and her side just grazed the boat. All hands on the forecastle gazed down anxiously for the boy's reappearance. Up he came next moment with a bubbling cry and clutching fingers. "He can't swim!" cried one. "Out with a lifebelt!" shouted another.
And, as she had foreseen when drifting down the tide-river in the rain and darkness once the supporting tension of Faircloth's presence removed, chaos would close in on her. It only waited due opportunity. That granted, as a tempest-driven sea it would submerge her. In the welter of the present, she clutched at the high dignities and distinctions of the past as at a lifebelt.
There was an anxious interval, and then the mate's head appeared above the water, and after a breathing- space disappeared again. The skipper, watching uneasily, stood by with a lifebelt. "Come out, Ted," screamed his sister as he came up for breath again. The mate disappeared once more, but coming up for the third time, hung on to the side of the barge to recover a bit.
The helmet, a sou'wester; the breastplate, a lifebelt of cork; the sword, a strong short oar; their war-galley, a splendid lifeboat; and their shield the Hand of God.
"But you've no lifebelt on," she faltered. "I don't need it," he assured her. "I can keep afloat perfectly well. You're not cold?" "No," she gasped, "but I feel so low down. The sky seems suddenly further away. Oh, if some one would come!" There were sirens now, and plenty of them, close at hand. Out of the mist they saw a great black hull looming. "They're here all right!" he cried.
The Quartermaster looked infinitely old and very tired with living. It was the girl, after all, who spied them two figures one inert and almost lifeless; one very like a bobbing tomato, but revealing a blue face and two desperate eyes above a ship's lifebelt. The Chief came to an hour or so later and found the woman near, pale and tragic, and not so young as he had kept her in his heart.
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