“Humph,” said Tish. “Well, as far as I’m concerned, after the prices they charged me at that hotel the Germans are welcome to New York. I’d give it to them and say ‘Thank you’ when they took it.”
We then went below and tried on our life-preserving suits, which the clerk at the steamship office had rented to us at fifteen dollars each.
He said they were most essential, and that when properly inflated one could float about in them for a week. Indeed, as Tish said, with a compass and a small sail one could probably make the nearest land, such as the Azores, supporting life in the meantime with ship’s biscuits, and so on, in waterproof packages, carried in the pockets provided for the purpose. She did indeed go so far as to place a bottle of blackberry cordial in the pocket of each suit, and also a small tin of preserved ginger, which we have always found highly sustaining. But we were somewhat uneasy to discover that it required a considerable length of time to get into the suits.
We had barely got into them when we heard a bugle blowing and men running. Just after that an alarm bell began to ring, and Aggie said “It has come!” and as usual commenced to sneeze violently. We ran out on deck, dear Tish saying to be calm, as more lives were lost through excitement than anything else; though she herself was none too calm, for when we found afterward that it was only a lifeboat drill I discovered that she was carrying her silver-handled umbrella.
Every one was on the deck, and I must say that we were followed by envious glances. As we had inflated the suits they were not immodest, effectually concealing the lines of the figure, but making it difficult to pass through doorways.
There was a very nice young man on deck, in a Red Cross uniform, and he said that as he was the only male in our lifeboat he was pleased to see that three of the eighteen ladies in it were prepared to take care of themselves. He said that he felt he would probably have his hands full saving the fifteen others.
“Not,” he added, “that I should feel comfortable until you were safely in the boat anyhow. I should not like to think of you floating about, perhaps for weeks, and possibly dodging sharks and so on.”
Tish liked him at once, and said that in case of trouble if the boat were crowded we would only ask for a towing line.
It was while this conversation was going on that Aggie suddenly said: “I’ve changed my mind, Tish, I’m not going.”
Well, we looked at her. She was a green color, and she said she’d thank us to put her off in something or other and let her go back. She wasn’t seasick, but she just didn’t care for the sea. She never had and she never would. And then she said “Ugh!” and the Red Cross man put his arm around her as far as it would go in the rubber suit, and said that certainly she was not seasick, but that some people found the sea air too stimulating, and she’d better go below and not get too much of it at first.