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Updated: August 1, 2024
"I've just called you all here," said Jack, "that you may cast your eyes upon one of the kaiser's paid murderers. It is men like this who have made an outcast of Germany. Not satisfied with killing in battle, they fire on helpless lifeboats, sending women and children as well as unarmed noncombatants to the bottom of the sea.
The two lifeboats got together before they reached the edge of the Goodwins, and held such consultation as was possible in the pitchy darkness and in the roar of the sea. It was agreed between them that there would be much difficulty in finding the vessel in distress, as her signals and blue lights had ceased and the night was very dark.
And what of Mr Denham, the head of the wealthy firm, who years ago had expressed the opinion that lifeboats were unnecessary, and that "those who devoted themselves to a sea-faring life ought to make up their minds to the chances and risks attending such a life"? What thought he as he lay there in the bottom of the boat terrified almost to death; shaken and bruised by the repeated and awful shocks; chilled by the intense cold, and drenched to the skin, with just enough life left to enable him to cling to a thwart; what thought he on that terrible night?
In the meantime the other lifeboats had been lowered away; the painter from the third boat was passed to the second, which in turn passed its painter to the motor boat, and the ship's company hauled clear of the shattered, sinking ship. The Costa Rica was going down by the head, and Cappy, curious as any human being, sat up to watch his decoy disappear. The submarine steamed up to them.
At this moment another fatality threatened the doomed crew it was what might have been expected: the steerage passengers, mostly a low and brutalized order of men, in whom the mere animal instinct of love of life and fear of death was predominant over every nobler emotion, came rushing in a body up the deck, and crying with one voice: "To the lifeboats! to the lifeboats!
"That is the true spirit of greatness," Father said, thoughtfully. And when the Titanic went down in mid-ocean with such a loss of life, and the order was for the women and children first to the lifeboats, men to keep back, Father said: "That took real grit. I hope I'll never have to face such a crisis."
There were, as is known, stokers and stewards in the boats who were not members of the lifeboats' crews.
Captain King, in the Callistonian vessel, transmitted to Breckenridge the route and flight data given him by the navigator of the winged craft. The chief pilot, flying "point," in turn relayed more detailed instructions to the less experienced pilots of the other lifeboats. Soon the surface of Europa lay beneath them; a rugged, cratered, and torn topography of mighty ranges of volcanic mountains.
Carr, who was the first person he met on deck. "The lifeboats? What for?" "Why, the ship has been rammed by a whale and is sinking." "Who told you so?" "That boy, Bob Henderson." "I thought so!" exclaimed the mate. "That's one of his so-called 'jokes. There's no danger, Mr. Tarbill. That was only a big wave that hit us. You are perfectly safe." "Are you sure?" "Quite sure."
Captain Rostron said that the Carpathia had twenty lifeboats of her own, in accordance with the British regulations. "Wouldn't that indicate that the regulations are out of date, your ship being much smaller than the Titanic, which also carried twenty life-boats?" Senator Smith asked. "No. The Titanic was supposed to be a life-boat herself."
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