Saltash dragged himself up in the darkness, sought to drag Toby also, found him a dead weight, stooped and lifted him with wiry strength. He trod among broken glass and plates as he straightened himself. The noise above them was increasing. He flung the limp form over his shoulder and began desperately to claw his way up a steep slant towards the saloon-door and the companion-way. Sound and instinct guided him, for the darkness was complete. But he was not the man to die like a trapped animal while the most slender way of escape remained. Hampered as he was, he made for the open with set teeth and terrible foreign oaths of which he was utterly unconscious. Whether that fierce struggle for freedom could ever have ended in success single-handed, however, was a point which he was not destined to decide, for after a space of desperate effort which no time could measure, there suddenly shone the gleam of an electric torch in front of him, and he saw the opening but a few feet away. "Saltash!" cried a voice, piercing the outer din, "Saltash!" "Here!" yelled back Saltash, still fighting for foothold and finding it against the leg of the table, "That you, Larpent? How long have we got?" "Seconds only!" said Larpent briefly. "Give me the child!" "No! Just give me a hand, that's all! Hang on tight! It'll be a pull." Saltash flung himself forward again, his free hand outstretched, slipped and nearly fell on his face, then was caught by a vice-like grip that drew him upward with grim strength. In a moment he was braced against the frame of the door, almost standing on it, the saloon gaping below him--a black pit of destruction. Larpent's torch showed the companion stairs practically perpendicular above them. "Go on!" said Larpent. "Better give me the child. It's you that matters." "Get out, damn you!" said Saltash, and actually grinned as he began to climb with his burden still hanging upon his shoulder. Larpent came behind him, holding his torch to light the way. They climbed up into a pandemonium indescribable, a wild torrent of sound. There was light here that shone in a great flare through billows of fog, showing the monster form of a great vessel towering above them with only a few yards of mist-wreathed water between. The deck on which they stood sloped upwards at an acute angle, and still from below there came the clamour of escaping steam accompanied by a spasmodic throbbing that was like the futile beating of giant wings against Titanic bars. A knot of men were struggling to lower a boat by the ghostly glare that lit the night about them, clambering and slipping against the rails, while a voice from beyond the fog-curtain yelled through a megaphone unintelligible commands.