The Engineer Lieutenant was concerned with none of these fine thoughts. For one second he did pause, looking about as if for somewhere to put his pipe. Then he tossed it on to the deck, scrambled over the rail, took a deep breath, and dived. The Marine sentry ran to the side of the ship. "_Christ!_" he gasped, and forsook his post, to cry the tale aloud along the seething battery. The ship shuddered as the engines were reversed, and the water under the stern began to seethe and churn. The Commander had left his cabin, and was racing up to the bridge, as the Captain reached the quarterdeck. A knot of officers gathered on the after-bridge. "Pin’s out, sir!" shouted the Coxswain of the sea-boat, and added under his breath, "Oars all ready, lads! Stan’ by to pull like bloody ’ell—there’s two of ’em in the ditch...." The boat was hanging a few feet above the tumbling water. "Slip!" shouted a voice from the invisible fore-bridge. An instant’s pause, and the boat dropped with a crash on to a rising wave, There was a clatter and thud of oars in row-locks; the clanking of the chain-slings, and the boat, with her motley-clad[#] life-belted crew, slid off down the slant of a wave. For a moment the glare of an electric light lit the faces of the men, tugging and straining grimly at their oars; then she vanished, to reappear a moment later on the crest of a sea, and disappeared again into the darkness. [#] Any one near the boat responds to the call "Away Life-boat’s crew!" The Commander on the fore-bridge snatched up a megaphone, shouting down-wind— "Pull to starboard, cutter! Make for the life-buoy light!" The watchers on the after-bridge were peering into the night with binoculars and glasses. The A.P. extended an arm and forefinger: "There’s the life-buoy—there! ... Now—there! D’you see it? You can just see the flare when it lifts on a wave.... Ah! That’s better!" The dazzling white beam from a search-light on the fore-bridge leaped suddenly into the night. "Now we can see the cutter—" the beam wavered a moment and finally steadied. "Yes, there they are.... I say, there’s a devil of a sea running." "Ripping sea-boats our Service cutters are," said another, staring through his glasses. "They’ll live in almost anything; but this isn’t a dangerous sea. The skipper ’ll turn in a minute and make a lee for them." "Think old Shortie reached the buoy?" "Probably swimming about looking for the other fellow, if I know anything of him; who did he go in after?" "One of the duty sub.—they were securing the anchor or something forward, and the bowline slipped——" "By gad! He’s got him! There’s the buoy—yes, two of them. _Good_ old Shortie.... My God! _Good_ old Shortie!" The speaker executed a sort of war-dance and trod on the Paymaster’s toes.