He gave a short dry laugh. "What a rotten deal," he said. "My dream was--different.... There is your boat--THAT one!... I'll say good luck. I'm assigned to a station on the port side. ... Good luck.... And thank you, Eve." "Don't go--" "Yes, I must.. We'll find each other--ashore--or somewhere." "Kay! The port boats can't be launched--" "Take your place! you're next, Eve."... Her hand, which had clung to his, he suddenly twisted up, and touched the convulsively tightening fingers with his lips. "Good luck, dear," he said gaily. And watched her go and take her place. Then he lifted his cap, as she turned and looked for him, and sauntered off to where his boat and station should have been had not the U-boat shells annihilated boat and rail and deck. "What a devil of a mess!" he said to a petty officer near him. A young doctor smoking a cigarette surveyed his own life-suit and the clumsy apparel of his neighbours with unfeigned curiosity! "How long do these things keep one afloat?" he inquired. "Long enough to freeze solid," replied an ambulance driver. "Did we get the Hun?" asked McKay of the petty officer. "Naw," he replied in disgust, "but the destroyers ought to nail him. Look out, sir--you'll go sliding down that slippery toboggan!" "How long'll she float?" asked the young ambulance driver. "This ship? SHE'S all right," remarked the petty officer absently. She went down, nose first. Those in the starboard boats saw her stand on end for full five minutes, screws spinning, before a muffled detonation blew the bowels out of her and sucked her down like a plunging arrow. Destroyers and launches from some of the cruisers were busy amid the wreckage where here, on a spar, some stunned form clung like a limpet, and there, a-bob in the curling seas, a swimmer in his life-suit tossed under the wintry sky. There were men on rafts, too, and several clinging to hatches; there was not much loss of life, considering. Toward midday a sea-plane which had been releasing depth-bombs and hovering eagerly above the wide iridescent and spreading stain, sheered shoreward and shot along the coast. There was a dead man afloat in a cave, rocking there rather peacefully in his life-suit--or at least they supposed him to be dead. But on a chance they signalled the discovery to a distant trawler, then soared upward for a general coup de l'oeil, turned there aloft like a seahawk for a while, sheering in widening spirals, and finally, high in the grey sky, set a steady course for parts unknown.