“Poor child! She lost her mother and sister, and only a year ago her father, William Barbour, of Silverstone, was killed. She’s alone in the world, but Florence will never need a friend or home while I have breath in my body.”
Big and rugged as he is, Crellin’s eyes grew moist as he recalled how the child’s mother and three-year-old sister Evelyn were drowned.
GAVE UP HIS LIFE-BELT
A well-built young fellow, Kenneth McIntyre, was disinclined to go into the part he had played, but a Salvation Army officer, also a survivor, related how McIntyre had taken his own life-belt off a few minutes before the Empress took her last plunge, and put it about a woman close by. The woman was picked up later by one of the life-boats.
CHAPTER VII
The Surgeon’s Thrilling Story
By Dr. James F. Grant
Ship’s Surgeon on the Empress of Ireland
HAD DIFFICULTY REACHING DECK—MANY PLUNGE INTO ICY WATER—WEIRD SHRIEKS OF TERROR—PASSENGERS CAUGHT LIKE RATS
I WAS in my cabin, and heard nothing until the boat listed so badly that I tumbled out of my berth and rolled under it. I concluded that something had gone wrong, and tried to turn on the light, but there was no power. I tried to find the door bolt, but the list was so strong that it took me considerable time to open the door.