Out of the darkness above, a dozen small pocket flashlights blinked down on us and orders began to be shouted fast and thick.
When I look back on the night, I don't know which was the more hazardous, going down the slanting side of the sinking Laconia or going up the side of the rescuing vessel.
One minute the swells would lift us almost level with the rail of the low-built patrol boat and mine sweeper, but the next receding wave would swirl us down into a darksome gulf over which the ship's side glowered like a slimy, dripping cliff.
A score of hands reached out and we were suspended in the husky, tattooed arms of those doughty British Jack Tars, looking up into their weather-beaten youthful faces, mumbling our thankfulness and reading in the gold lettering on their pancake hats the legend, "H. M. S. Laburnum." We had been six hours in the open boat.
The others began coming alongside one by one. Wet and bedraggled survivors were lifted aboard. Women and children first was the rule.
The scenes of reunion were heart-gripping. Men who had remained strangers to one another aboard the Laconia, now wrung each other by the hand or embraced without shame the frail little wife of a Canadian chaplain who had found one of her missing children delivered up from another boat. She smothered the child with ravenous mother kisses while tears of gladness streamed down her face.
Boat after boat came alongside. The water-logged craft containing the Captain came last.
A rousing cheer went up as he stepped on the deck, one mangled hand hanging limp at his side.
The sailors divested themselves of outer clothing and passed the garments over to the shivering members of the Laconia's crew.
The cramped officers' quarters down under the quarter deck were turned over to the women and children. Two of the Laconia's stewardesses passed boiling basins of navy cocoa and aided in the disentangling of wet and matted tresses.