The dull, hapless occupants of the lifeboats watched with fascinated eyes the first of the giant rockets that whizzed and roared its way up from the deck of the ship, an endless arrow of fire piercing the night. A loud report, the scattering of a hundred stars, and then—denser blackness than before.
Morning came. Up out of the east stole a sickly grey. It turned slowly into pink, and then suddenly the sea once more was blue and smiling. In the heart of the dancing cordon lay the weirdly camouflaged Doraine, inert, sinister, as still and cold as death. No smoke issued from her stacks to cheer the wretched watchers; no foam, no spray leaped from her mighty bow. She was a great, lifeless thing. Waves lapped gently against her sides and fell away only to come back again in playful scorn for the vast object that had rent and baffled them so long. On high fluttered the Stars and Stripes, gay in the presence of death, a sprightly harbinger of hope flaunting defiance in the face of despair.
Men, stripped to the waist, grimy and shining with the sweat of hours, moving about in knots of three and four—always in knots of three or four as if afraid to disintegrate—leaned upon the rail and watched the approach of the crowded boats, looked down into pallid, anguished faces with their eager, hungry eyes, eyes that devoured the groups along the rail. Now and then a glad shout of joy went up from one of the boats, and a figure in the huddled mass was transformed into a responsive thing of life.
In each of the square, black openings in the hull of the ship stood men with ropes and ladders. The great steel doors lay flat against the sides, swung wide to admit this time a human cargo. From the interior of the vessel came the brisk, incessant clatter of hammers against wood and steel; from the decks broke the loud, commanding voices of men calling out directions; from the gliding, slapping boats went up the hearty shouts of understanding and obedience, the rattling of boat-hooks, the grinding of oars in the locks, the murmur of voices revived.
“Vomen and children first!” was the shrill, oft-repeated exhortation from one of the boats.
And up in the centre of another sprang a fine, imposing figure, from whose lips rolled these thrilling words:
“By God, they're great! They're great, after all! God bless Captain Trigger and every man-jack of them!”
“Get down!” roared his still unpacified critic, the steward. “You'll fall overboard, you dam' fool!”
The gaunt, coatless Mr. Mott commanded the port side of the vessel; Mr. Codge, the purser, the starboard. Fighting men in the breeches and leggings of the American Navy; blackened and bandaged stokers, sailors and landsmen comprised the motley company that stood ready to drag the occupants of the boats up into the dank, smoke-scented maw of the ship.
One by one, in regular, systematic order, the lifeboats came alongside. There was no confusion, no bungling. They bumped gently against the towering rows of plates, and, made fast by ropes with ample play, gave up in time their precious cargoes. No one lifted up his voice in rejoicing, for there were dead and injured back in the shadows; there were grief-stricken, anxious men and women crouching out there in the sunshine; there were limp, unconscious women and half-dead children; and over all still hung the ominous cloud of catastrophe fat with prophecies of perils yet to come.