A wave passed surging down the ship's side, carrying on its crest the head and shoulders of a man. His face was ashen grey, and his hands grabbed ineffectually at the slipping coils of a rope's end thrown from the forecastle. He slid helplessly into the trough of the sea, his eyes wide and terrified, staring at the rows of faces above him.
"'Ere, Fritz," said a rough voice, "'ang on!" and another rope jerked and fell with a splash beside him. Again the clutching hands went out, but his strength was gone. The white face fell forward—jerked back, gasping and choking—the hands went up.
"Gangway, you fools! He'll drown!" Two able seamen, leaning over the side—one had escaped from a German prison camp six months previously, and was enjoying himself—were thrust apart; a burly figure in socks, and divested of his reefer jacket, steadied himself with one hand on a davit while he measured the distance, and dived.
"Number One!" gasped the incredulous Commander. "Don't tell me that's the First Lieutenant?"
"Yessir," said the Wardroom Steward, who had been passing up ammunition, with a cigarette behind his ear, and a hastily-collected gallery of lady-loves' photographs projecting from his breast-pocket.
"Yessir." Adding, as one in the confidence of the Wardroom: "'Im as lost 'is brother, bombed by them 'Uns. Actin' regardless, you might say."
The First Lieutenant, treading water, was effecting a businesslike bowline under the armpits of the drowning man, and avoiding his enfeebled embrace with considerable presence of mind.
Finally the two were hauled inboard and the ship's company raised a cheer.
"Shut up, will you!" spluttered the First Lieutenant, angrily, wringing the water from his sodden nether garments. He avoided the eye of his Commanding Officer.
The ship's company, under direction of the Surgeon, applied themselves to first aid with all the enthusiasm of victors and amateurs in the gentle art of saving life. The whaler, laden with dazed and bedraggled captives, was pulling wearily up to the quarter, rising and plunging in the steep seas. The business of the ensuing five minutes brought the Commander and his First Lieutenant face to face.