Then, stooping, he picked it up and handed it to Hudson, who thrust it into his breast pocket.
"Thank you!" he said. "Now if you will all leave your guns on this bed we'll go on deck and see the traces."
When they reached the deck there was something that looked like an enormous drowning cockroach trying to crawl out of the water four hundred yards away. Round it there seemed to be a mass of drowning flies.
"It's not a pleasant sight, is it?" said Hudson. "But it's good to know they were all fighting men, ready to kill or be killed. No women and children among them! The Lusitania must have looked much worse."
"My brother is on board! Are you not trying to save them?" gasped the officer.
Hudson took out the little shoe again and looked at it. Then he turned to the German boat's crew, where they huddled, sick with fear, amidships.
"Take your boat and pick up as many as you can," he said.
"It is not safe—not till she sinks," a guttural voice replied.
Almost on the word the cruiser went down with a rush. The sleek waters and the white mists closed above her, while the Morning Glory rocked again like a child's cradle.
"That is true," said Matthew Hudson to the shivering figure beside him. "And we've got as many as we can handle on the ship. If we took more of you aboard, according to the laws laid down in your text-books, you'd cut our throats and call us idiotic Yankees for trusting you.