he scene of the foundering.

Lines were cast to jackies who were towing frightened passengers. Rescue
moved along swiftly, the launches from both destroyers backing slowly
away from the settling craft.

"Here y'are, lady!" coaxed one seaman from the first launch, catching a
line at twenty feet and placing it in the hands of a frightened woman
whose teeth chattered and who was nearly dead from the cold that the icy
water sent through to the marrow of her bones. "Think y' can hold on,
lady? If y' can, I can go back and help some one else."

The woman, though she spoke no English, guessed the meaning of the
question, and shrieked with terror.

"Oh, all right, ma'am," the sailor went on, in a tone of good-humored
resignation. "I'll make sure of you, and hope that some one else won't
drown."

With one arm around her, the other hand holding tight to the rope the
jacky allowed himself to be hauled in alongside the launch.

"Take this lady in, quick!" ordered Jacky. "She's about all in with the
cold."

"Better come on board, too, Streeter," advised a petty officer on the
launch.

"Too much to be done," replied Seaman Streeter, shoving off and starting
to swim back.

"Your teeth are chattering now," called the petty officer, but Seaman
Streeter, with lusty strokes, was heading for a hatless, white-haired old
man whom he made out, under the searchlight glare, a hundred yards away.
This man, too chilled to swim for himself, though buoyed up by a belt,
Streeter brought in.

"Come on board, Streeter," insisted the same petty officer.

But surely that jacky was deaf, for he turned and once more struck out.
By the time that the liner had been down four minutes, and the last
visible and living person in the water had been rescued, Seaman Streeter
had brought in six men and women, five of whom would surely have died of
the cold had he not gone to their aid. And he had turned to swim back
after a possible seventh.

Nearly six hundred passengers and members of the sunken liner's crew had
been saved. Of these the greatest sufferers were taken aboard the
"Grigsby" and the "Reed" and the remainder were left in the boats, which
were towed astern.

Dave decided that the rescued ones should be landed at an English port
twenty-two miles away. This port had rail communication and prompt,
effective care could be given to these hundreds of people.

As soon as the start had been made for port, roll-call was held of those
who had p