ings about which he was
uncertain. His slightly Teutonic dialect had made him as popular as the
smallpox with the British passengers.

"My poy, I can't see nutting," he said. "My glasses slipped and I am
falling. Hold me, please."

I managed to reach out and join hands with another man on the other side
of the old man and together we held him in. He hung heavily over our
arms, grotesquely grasping all he had saved from his stateroom--a
gold-headed cane and an extra hat.

Many feet and hands pushed the boat from the side of the ship and we
renewed our sagging, scraping, sliding, jerking descent. It ended as the
bottom of the life-boat smacked squarely on the pillowy top of a rising
swell. It felt more solid than mid-air at least.

But we were far from being off. The pulleys twice stuck in their
fastings, bow and stern, and the one axe was passed forward and back
(and with it my flashlight) as the entangling mesh of ropes that held
us to the sinking _Laconia_ was cut away.

Some shout from that confusion of sound caused me to look up. I believe
I really did so in the fear that one of the nearby boats was being
lowered upon us.

Tin funnels enamelled white and containing clusters of electric bulbs
hung over the side from one of the upper decks. I looked up into the
cone of one of these lights and a bulky object shot suddenly out of the
darkness into the scope of the electric rays.

It was a man. His arms were bent up at the elbows; his legs at the
knees. He was jumping, with the intention, I feared, of landing in our
boat, and I prepared to avoid the impact. But he had judged his distance
well.

He plunged beyond us and into the water three feet from the edge of the
boat. He sank from sight, leaving a white patch of bubbles and foam on
the black water. He bobbed to the surface almost immediately.

"It's Dugan," shouted a man next to me.

I flashed a light on the ruddy, smiling face and water plastered hair of
the little Canadian aviator, our fellow saloon passenger. We pulled him
over the side and into the boat. He spluttered out a mouthful of water.

"I wonder if there is anything to that lighting three matches off the
same match," he said. "I was trying to loosen the bow rope in this boat.
I loosened it and then got tangled up in it. When the boat descended, I
was jerked up back on the deck. Then I jumped for it. Holy Moses, but
this water is cold."

As we pulled away from the side of the ship, its recedin