He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened Cecily never knew: principally because she was concentrating her mind on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs of mal-de-mer might be expected to encompass her. But the fact remains that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were all struggling in the water.
Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory based upon a fallacy….
The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a muffled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken hull as a bulkhead went. The great ship lurched sickeningly above them as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to his grand traditions he was staying by his ship to the last. She listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then, the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived.
The stern of the ship rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface. One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the stern.
Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man.
He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist.
"The curs!" he said. "The dirty scum…. Women on board…. No warning…." Anger and salt water choked him.
"They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a passenger ship. Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning…. I'll spit in the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!"
A little elderly lady with a bonnet perched awry on her thin grey hair suddenly began a hymn in a high quavering soprano.
"That's right, ma'am," said the Captain approvingly, as he wrung the water out of his clothes. "There's nothing like singing to cure sea-sickness. And we shan't be here very long." He pointed to the high bows of a rapidly approaching ship. "One of our Armed Merchant Cruisers, I fancy." He waved to the other boats to close nearer.
He was no mere optimist; before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the boats were strung out in a line towing from a rope that led from the bows of the Cruiser. A hastily improvised boatswain's stool was lowered from a davit, and one by one the passengers, then the crew, and finally the officers of the torpedoed liner were swung into the air and hoisted inboard while the Armed Merchant Cruiser continued her course.