mile upon our right.

The usual rumour started up and down the deck that there were dead
bodies in the boat, but the petty officer answered my question by saying
that it was 2,000 lives against one possible life that every drifting
boat must be looked upon as a German decoy; that if the steamer stopped
to send sailors with a life-boat to investigate it would simply give a
German submarine a chance to come up with torpedoes. At that very moment
one of the men beside the gun sighted a periscope and a moment later the
gun roared and then boomed a second time and then a third. Because the
object disappeared, all passengers said it was a submarine, but the
officers said it was a piece of driftwood, tossed up on the crest of a
wave.

That night, on deck, a close friend of the purser came for an hour's
walk around the deck. The memory of those three shots rested heavily
upon his mind.

It seemed that some months before he had been a purser on an East Indian
liner. On the home voyage, twenty-four hours after they left Cairo, when
well out into the Mediterranean, this officer went below for an hour's
rest. Suddenly a torpedo struck the steamer. The force of the explosion
literally blew the purser out of his berth. Grabbing some clothes, he
ran through the narrow passageway, already ankle deep in rushing water.
The great ship carried several thousand soldiers and a few women who
were coming home from India or from Egypt. Despite the fact that all
realized the steamer would go down within a few minutes, there was no
confusion and the soldiers lined up as if on parade.

The boat went down in about eight minutes, but every one of the women
and children had on their life-preservers and were given first places in
the life-boats that had not been ruined by the explosion.

The purser said that he decided to jump from the deck and swim as far as
possible from the steamer, but despite his struggles he was drawn under
and came up half unconscious to find himself surrounded with swimming
men and sinking rowboats that were being shelled by the German
submarine. Suddenly a machine-gun bullet passed through his right
shoulder and left an arm helpless. For half an hour he lay with his left
arm upon a floating board, held up by his life-preserver. The submarine
had disappeared. At distances far removed were three of the ship's
boats and one raft. It was plain that there was no help in sight.

Near him was a woman, to whom he called. The pu