“Volunteers to go up there and help those people! Smart, now!” sang out the executive officer of the Colodia through his trumpet.
Ikey Rosenmeyer and Frenchy Donahue, who were both free, leaped forward at the call. With Seven Knott and two other sailors, they swarmed up to the high bows of the imperiled ship.
The two Seacove boys were well trained in the uses of cordage and in knotting and splicing. They seized a coil of rope and, working together swiftly, safely lowered three women and a wounded man over the rail to the destroyer’s deck before they were piped down from the Susanne.
Even the dead body of the murdered purser was sent aboard the Colodia. The flames were by that time surging upward, and it was almost too hot to stand upon her forward decks. The bows of the ship were being thrust up as her stern sank. At any minute the wreck might plunge beneath the sea.
“Back all!” rose a stentorian voice from the destroyer.
Ikey and Frenchy went over the rail and swarmed down their respective lines. They were guided inboard to the firm deck of the destroyer. The other workers followed. The Colodia backed swiftly away.
Nor was this done a minute too soon. The wreck was already wallowing from side to side like some wounded monster of the sea. The air pressure blew up the forward deck. Had the survivors remained longer they would have been overwhelmed!
A roaring like that of a great exhaust pipe came from the interior of the sugar ship. The sea began to seethe in a whirlpool about her. She stood almost upright on her stern as she sank.
Down, down she went, while the destroyer turned tail and scudded away at top speed. To be caught in that whirlpool would have spelled disaster for even as staunch a craft as the Colodia undoubtedly was.
The Susanne disappeared slowly, with great combers roaring about her. Beaten to a froth, the waves leaped, white-maned, upon her tossing sprit, and finally hid even that from sight. The sea was a cauldron of boiling waters, and that for hundreds of yards around.