A little distance away he saw, and now recognised, his brother Rodney, swimming back to him with a hand under the chin of a wounded midshipman. The boy was brought alongside and lifted to the grating; but Mark Redisham saw that he was already beyond all need of human help.
Rodney clambered upon the raft, and saw what Mark had seen.
"He was one of my pals at Dartmouth," he said. "Look around and see if there are any others."
"Max Hilliger is somewhere about," Mark answered; "but I see no sign of him."
"I expect he will be picked up," returned Rodney. "See! There's one of the destroyers putting out her boats."
The leading destroyer had meanwhile come close up to the Atreus, and was sending out a hawser, with the intention of getting her in tow by the stern. It was soon obvious, however, that this attempt to save the vessel was useless. She was settling down, the waves washing over her bows, her stern tilted high.
It was clearly time to abandon the ship. The order to do so was given; the men were falling in on her steeply sloping quarter-deck. Boats from the destroyers were pulled alongside, and without hurry or confusion men, officers, and captain left her to her fate.
A boat from the destroyer Levity picked up Rodney and Mark Redisham. Still in their wet clothes, they gave help in attending to the wounded. All of the survivors who were not hurt had been in the afterpart of the ship when she struck the mine. Those who had been below in the stokeholds and seamen's quarters were killed to the number of a hundred and forty men, apart from some thirty of the German prisoners taken from the Minna von Barnhelm.
Nor was this the end of the disaster. The destroyer's boats had barely drawn off from the sinking cruiser when she struck a second mine. It exploded the fore magazine. Two of the rescue boats were smashed; wreckage, falling from a great height, struck others, and one of the cruiser's shells, bursting on the deck of the Levity, killed three men.
When this happened, Mark was giving first-aid to a wounded signal-boy who had been carried below into the temporary cockpit. The shell exploded with a deafening crash just above his head. It seemed as if the stout deck plates were burst asunder. He betrayed no alarm, but went on with his work of attending to the signal-boy, until the surgeon came with his instruments and bandages.