SALVATION ARMY LASSIE RESCUED WHEN ABOUT TO SINK
Tales of each other’s heroic rescues, and shuddering accounts of their own mishaps and fight for life in the swirling St. Lawrence, were told.
With a blanket thrown round her shoulders, her eyes lit with the wild excitement of the night of horror, Miss Alice Bales, one of the young women Salvationists who was saved, recounted how her struggles finally brought succor and safety. Her cheeks were successively hectic and pallid as she told the hideous story. She said:
“I thought we had struck an iceberg when I heard the fearful grinding in the bows. With a cry to the girls who were with me, I stumbled out of the narrow stateroom, and groped up to the deck. Here was chaos. The ship was listing, listing, listing. Every step I took to the uppermost part of the deck, I seemed to be slipping back into that maelstrom of water and falling bodies. Finally, I gained the rail. I climbed up on the rail, and with a prayer in my heart I jumped into the blackness. The water surged over my head. Down, down, I went. I could not swim a stroke. But I remembered that you should keep the air in your lungs, and as I sank I clenched my jaws, determined to stay with the battle as long as strength lasted. After long, long periods of struggle and fainting and renewed struggle, I saw a man, not far off, swimming with a life-belt. I forgot to tell you that I fastened a belt around my waist when I jumped.
“I reached my hand towards this hope of rescue, the man’s belt. It eluded me. Finally I grasped it. Then I saw how the man made the swimming motions, like a frog. I tried to do the same. I used every fibre and nerve to make the motions. I knew this was the chance for life.
“Then, when my energy was going fast, I heard a faint cry. There was a cluster of people. It was a life-boat.
“The next few moments are indistinct in my memory. Some one was lifting me, dragging me over something hard. Now they were speaking to me. They revived me, and I was got aboard the Storstad, the ship that struck us.
“I can’t tell you any more. The scenes on the deck, ah——”