Luke stood holding Agatha with one arm. He was watching the two boats making their way through the choppy sea towards them, and Agatha was watching his face.
The Croonah was now lying right over on her beam ends. Luke was standing on the wire network of the rail. Suddenly he threw himself backwards, and as they fell through space Agatha heard the captain’s voice quite distinctly, as from the silence of another world.
“She’s going!” he cried.
They struck the water together, Luke undermost, as he had intended. Agatha shut her eyes and clung to him. They seemed to go down and down. Then suddenly she heard Luke’s voice.
“Take a breath,” he gasped short and sharp. His voice was singularly stern.
With his disengaged hand he put her hair from her face. She opened her eyes and saw him smiling at her; she saw a huge piece of wreckage poised on the edge of a wave over his head; she saw it fall; she felt the shock of it.
Luke’s arm lost its hold; he rolled over feebly in the water, the blood running down his face, a sudden sense of sleep in his brain. He awoke again to find himself swimming mechanically, and opened his eyes. Close to him something white was floating half under water. Spread out over the surface of the wave Agatha’s long hair rose and fell like seaweed, almost within his grasp. It was like a horrible nightmare. He tried to reach it, but his arms were powerless; he could not make an inch of progress; he could only keep himself afloat. Agatha’s face was under water. On the rise of a wave he saw her little bare foot; it was quite still. He knew that she was dead, and the blessed sleepiness took him again, dragging him down.
. . . . .
So the last of the Croonah was her good name written large on a yellow telegram form, nailed to the panel of the room technically known as the Chamber of Horrors at Lloyd’s.
Around this telegram a group of grave-faced men stood in silence, or with muttered words of surprise.