And even had there not been a dozen wounded men on board--many of whom were in a critical condition--the situation had been none of the pleasantest. Once again, it looked as if all on board were doomed.
Crouch, seeing that there was no time to waste, gathered together all the men he could find, and set about the construction of a raft. In this task he was aided by the dilapidated condition in which the German battle-cruisers had left the ship. In the ordinary course of events, on such occasions, it is necessary to break up the deck with axes; but here, this work had already been done by the shellfire of the "Blücher." The demolished chart-room and the shattered bridge afforded an abundance of material. There was no lack of rope on board, and the buoyancy of the raft was considerably increased by a number of life-buoys and belts.
The raft was constructed on the forward well-deck, where the men, often standing up to their waists in water, worked in feverish haste; and it is astonishing what prodigies of labour can be accomplished in so terrible a situation. Indeed, they worked not only to save, their own lives, but also the lives of those of their comrades who were unable to assist themselves.
One after the other, the wounded were brought down from the main-deck, and laid upon mattresses, spread side by side upon the raft. There was something extraordinarily precarious in the state of these unhappy men, since they had no means of knowing whether the buoyancy of the raft would maintain the weight of them all, when the ship, at last, went down. Crouch had taken every precaution that was possible; practically without exception the lifebuoys and cork lifebelts had been lashed underneath the raft, the better to serve their purpose.
When it became clear that the ship was sinking rapidly, Crouch ordered all hands to the forward well-deck, to be ready for the crisis. Fortunately, the ship was going down on an even keel. It was probable, however, that at the last moment she would dive. If she did so stern foremost, all would be well; but if she shot down into deep water bows first, then the chances were that the foremast would foul the raft, which would either be destroyed piecemeal, dragged under water, or so tilted up that those who had sought safety there would be cast headlong into the sea.
The disaster came about quite gradually, and in the very way that suited them best. They had plenty of warning that the ship was about to go. The raft had been manned by all--except a few who were prepared to swim--when the water rose like ether in a tube from the after well-deck to the poop. And then--of all strange things--the whole ship bobbed forward, like a playful duck in a pond, whilst the sea spread in a long, single wave from the poop to the forecastle-peak, above which the raft shot clear like a ship launched from the slips.
When they found themselves free and floating upon the surface of the water, they marvelled that the whole thing had been so inconceivably simple. They were huddled together like a flock of sheep, and in three minutes they were wet from head to foot in spray and from the water that splashed upward through the gaping holes in the structure of the raft. The last they saw of the "Mondavia" was the top of her shattered funnel, gliding on the surface for the fraction of a second, like the dorsal fin of a shark. Then, even this small black object vanished, and there was nothing to be seen but an infinity of bubbles and hundreds of broken pieces of spar and splintered, painted wood. The "Mondavia" was gone.
Those who, as a wise precaution, had taken to the water, now that it was seen that the raft was safe, scrambled one after the other, drenched and dripping, to this frail, uncertain place of safety. There, crowded together, shivering from the wet and from the cold, they awaited whatsoever fate might be held in store for them, in the midst of the desolation of the sea.
They could not have been more than fifteen miles from the coast, but that, to them, was an infinite distance; they could never hope to gain the security of land. They had neither sail nor mast; there had been no time to make one or the other. Neither had they any means of propelling the raft. They could but drift whither tide and wind and current took them, and this was out to sea.
Moreover, it was now rapidly growing dark. The sun, which had remained hidden throughout the greater part of that memorable day, showed for a few minutes upon the north-western horizon, in a great flood of red and gold, and then dropped down into the sea. At the same time, the squall freshened once again; the wind showed signs of blowing up to a gale; and to make matters worse, a kind of sea fog--dripping wet and cold--drove up from the south, like a great cloud of smoke.