It was Spick, one of the oilers--a big chap, weighing a good one-ninety.
He grabbed the oar and lay across it, a dead weight. Someone else pulled me down.
It was little Tucker, mess attendant, a kid of seventeen. He was all in. I shoved them both along, and they were heavy, let me tell you. Someone in the boat saw us and drew alongside. They lifted us in.
Just then I saw him. He was swimming straight for us. I let out a yell, but it died in my throat.
Straight out of the water, not twenty yards away, rose the gray bulk of the submarine, its greenish light casting a weird glow over that awful scene of struggling men. Fritz's war-baby had come back to gloat over the damage it had done.
Our captain, with his pocket light, was flashing the Morse code on the water as he floundered about.
From the deck of the submarine the commander's voice rang out. He spoke as good English as I do.
Then it was that little Tucker, sitting forward, tense, leaned far out and yelled:
"Douse yer glim, Cap, douse yer glim. . . ."
Out it went. The commander gave an order. We couldn't hear it, but we were afraid he meant to make straight for us and cut us in two. We pulled away, but, instead, he was wishing us the best of luck to lie there and rot, and then they submerged--just vanished into the black water from which they had appeared.
We waited trembling, but nothing happened. There wasn't a boat in sight. The old hulk of our ship had gone down forever. I thought of the Captain and of McCaffrey.
"Let's get 'em now, mates," I urged. But from the direction in which we'd last heard them there came no sound. They weren't there. Nobody was. So we pulled away.
It was a leaky boat and we stripped off our shirts--anything we had on that was white, so that in case Fritz came back he could not sight us. We needed the shirts, all right, to stuff up the holes in the boat. Those who weren't stopping up the holes took turns bailing. We bailed like fiends--no time to think--no time for anything but to hope a convoy would pick us up.
Along toward dawn, at six-thirty to be exact, our own convoy sighted us. The boys were pretty stiff from exposure, but I was all right--all right and fighting mad--my matey had gone down.