With a group of Red Cross nurses who stood silently and calmly by the patients who were being borne to the deck, Darrin was sure that he caught sight of Belle. But he did not look a second time. There was too much to be done now when seconds were precious. Nor did Belle look up from the work that she was doing among the wounded on stretchers. A member of the crew led the American party below. Here Dave found two mates and a score of sailors already at work. They were trying to accomplish the very thing Darrin had come prepared to do--to rig canvas over the hole in the hull to shut out as much of the water as was possible. If this could be accomplished, and if the "Gloucester's" pumps could drive out most of the water that got in past the canvas patch, then it might be possible for the hospital ship to keep afloat until other rescue craft could reach the scene. "We'll take your orders, sir," spoke up one of the mates, saluting, as Dave and his party reached a forward hold where, despite the flimsy canvas patch already rigged, the water was almost waist-deep. "We'll work together," returned Dave, briefly. "It may turn out that the ship can be kept afloat for an hour or two." "The bulkheads were shut, sir," the mate explained, hurriedly, "but fragments of the mine entered this first water-tight compartment, and also the second. You'd better go down into the second compartment, too, sir." Darrin hurried up to the deck, followed by the mates and their men. The hole in the first compartment extended some six inches below water line and some two feet above. It was a long, jagged hole. Trying to descend into the second compartment with the chief mate, Darrin found that the hole here extended at least a foot below water line. "It's going to be no use, sir," said the mate, sorrowfully. "I don't believe the ship can be kept afloat more than ten minutes before she goes down by the head. These are our two biggest compartments." CHAPTER XXIII A NOBLE FIGHT WITHOUT WEAPONS NOR was the mate's warning a panicky one. There seemed not one chance in a hundred of closing the gaps sufficiently to keep the hospital ship afloat long enough to save many of its wounded passengers. Dave had made his plans while coming alongside. By this time the repair material he had brought along lay on the deck. He called his own men to help him, and the chief officer sent two score more of British seamen to his aid. The engine-room fires being as yet untouched by water, the pumps were working with tremendous force. "Unroll that canvas, there. Run it out lively," Darrin ordered. In a twinkling the first patch was ready. Dave himself helped with weighting what was intended for the lower edge of the patch, and with reeving in ropes at the sides and top. "Over with it!" Lowered down into place, the patch was fitted to the hole. It still had to be made fast.