“O Christ!” I heard him gasp. Then he stood up, trying to plunge into the sea and return to his beloved ship. Only the strong restraining arms of Swede and Oleson kept him back. He struggled like a maniac.
“Let me go, you ——s. Let me go!” he cried.
In this crisis the mate, Johnson, saved Father and us.
“The lifeboat’s sinking, Captain,” he said.
Those words brought Father out of his frenzy of grief at losing his ship. For the first time in my life I saw Father cry. He covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut out the sight. The weight of our bodies in the life boat opened up the already leaking seams.
Father reached through the rain to where I crouched in the stern and grabbed my arm. In a voice that became suddenly calm—he was once more the master in command, he said:
“Joan! Swim for it, kid,—the lightship.” He pointed to the pin point of light which was about three miles away. “Swim slowly and high out of water. And breathe deep, Joan, as deep as you can.”
“Yes, sir!” I answered, trying to hide the terror of the long swim.
“If you get all in—float. Take it easy, girl. I’ll be right behind you.”
He had only time to finish those words when the lifeboat filled with water up to the gunwales. If I had to swim no nightgown was going to get in my way to drag me down. I tore it from me, but the drenched kittens still clung to my flesh. I filled my lungs with a deep breath and jumped out of the lifeboat. When I came up in the choppy sea I was conscious of only the pain caused by the salt water on my bleeding cuts and scratches. Each stroke I took was like a knife cut, and I couldn’t shake the drowning kittens off. Perhaps to those cats I owe my life, for the pain made me so mad I fought on and on, toward the lightship which seemed to go farther away instead of closer. I could hear the others swimming near me, just the “cut-splash—cut-splash!” of their strokes. I had swum about a mile against a high running sea with the cats on my back. I was exhausted, so I trod water and drank the fresh rain that poured down. That is a trick for deep sea swimming—to drink rain water which absorbs the salt water that is swallowed.