"Jump!" they shouted back.
I threw my basket down. I had a good twenty-foot drop. I have always been a good swimmer. Furthermore, I saw that if I jumped into the boat, crowded with people, sails, water-barrels, and pails for bailing, I might cause it to capsize. So I told them to push the boat away and then they could pick me up out of the water.
I escaped with a ducking.
An immigrant girl who followed me flung herself down wildly and broke both her legs on the side of the ship.
We were powerless to save any more. The ship might at any moment receive the final torpedo from the submarine. The sailors rowed madly to get out of danger.
Then the torpedo was discharged. It whizzed across the ship, drawing a tail behind it like a comet. It plunged beneath the Ancona as if guided by a diabolical intelligence of its own. There followed a terrific explosion. Huge jets of thick black smoke shot up, with showers of débris. Our boat rocked and swayed in the roughened water. The Ancona lurched to the left, righted herself, shivered a moment—then her bow shot high in the air like a struggling, death-stricken animal. She went under, drawing a huge, funnel-like vortex after her.
The Captain and some officers were the last to drop astern, in a small boat. Passengers were still to be seen, clinging forward, like ants on driftwood, as the ship was drawn down. There were many people wounded, so that they could not get off unaided. They were left to die.
The sea now looked absolutely empty, swept smooth. The ship had drawn everything down with it. The fog undulating upward, the submarine was seen lying in full view, as if in quiet Teutonic contemplation of what it had done. Then it moved off, and was soon merged into the waste of sea and fog. We felt a great relief when it had departed.
IV—SURVIVORS DRIFTING ON THE OCEAN