n the deck. One of the lifeboats,
frightfully overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits. A
fragment of the shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the women and
children and the men vomited into the sea beneath, while the boat
dangled stern up for a moment from its single davit, and at last with
increasing momentum dived into the midst of the struggling victims
screaming upon the face of the waters.

Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The deck was
tilting to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all four feet
to keep from slipping into the scuppers and looked up into my face with
a questioning whine. I stooped and stroked his head.

"Come on, boy!" I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived
headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw was
Nobs swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards from me.
At sight of me his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a
characteristic grin.

The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time it was
shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with
survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target,
which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved
their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke
appeared upon the eastern horizon and the U-boat submerged and
disappeared.

All the time the lifeboats has 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