Love of women, Love of life....! Mighty factors—almost supreme. Yet a mortal has stayed in a wrecked stokehold, amid the scalding steam, to find and shut a valve; Leper Settlements have their doctors and pastor; and "A very gallant Gentleman" walks unhesitatingly into an Antarctic blizzard, to show there is a love stronger and higher even than these.
The Engineer Lieutenant was concerned with none of these fine thoughts. For one second he did pause, looking about as if for somewhere to put his pipe. Then he tossed it on to the deck, scrambled over the rail, took a deep breath, and dived.
The Marine sentry ran to the side of the ship.
"Christ!" he gasped, and forsook his post, to cry the tale aloud along the seething battery.
The ship shuddered as the engines were reversed, and the water under the stern began to seethe and churn. The Commander had left his cabin, and was racing up to the bridge, as the Captain reached the quarterdeck. A knot of officers gathered on the after-bridge.
"Pin's out, sir!" shouted the Coxswain of the sea-boat, and added under his breath, "Oars all ready, lads! Stan' by to pull like bloody 'ell—there's two of 'em in the ditch...." The boat was hanging a few feet above the tumbling water.
"Slip!" shouted a voice from the invisible fore-bridge. An instant's pause, and the boat dropped with a crash on to a rising wave, There was a clatter and thud of oars in row-locks; the clanking of the chain-slings, and the boat, with her motley-clad[#] life-belted crew, slid off down the slant of a wave. For a moment the glare of an electric light lit the faces of the men, tugging and straining grimly at their oars; then she vanished, to reappear a moment later on the crest of a sea, and disappeared again into the darkness.
[#] Any one near the boat responds to the call "Away Life-boat's crew!"
The Commander on the fore-bridge snatched up a megaphone, shouting down-wind—
"Pull to starboard, cutter! Make for the life-buoy light!"