“I’m not hurt,” Ruth said, ashamed of herself for having been brought to this place among so many who had been terribly wounded. “I’ve just been in the water; I’m wet, that’s all.” She moved to release herself from Gerry’s hold. “She went into the sea to save a man,” Gerry told Agnes Ertyle. “Let me go to the cabin,” Ruth said, as she stood a little dizzily. Lady Agnes grasped her hand. “If your cabin’s been wrecked, go to mine--number twenty-six--and take any of my things,” she invited. “Get dry and warm at once.” She motioned to someone who gave Ruth hot, strong tea to drink. Gerry turned with Ruth and led her up the stairs down which he had just carried her; he saw her to the door of her cabin, which had not been wrecked; he saw that a stewardess was there to aid her. Then he went. The stewardess helped Ruth undress and rubbed her and put on warm and heavy things. Milicent Wetherell came to the cabin; she had escaped uninjured, and she aided also. The rifles on the _Ribot’s_ deck rang out suddenly; they fired twice; again twice; and were still. Ruth had on warm, dry clothes now; and she ran out with Milicent Wetherell to the deck. While the _Ribot_ had been under shell fire, passengers had been kept from the decks; but now that the sole danger was from torpedoes, the decks had become the safest place. The gun crews had seen--Ruth was told--what they thought was a periscope and had fired. There was nothing in sight now near the _Ribot_ but the wreckage which had fallen during the fight. Far off to the right, the U-boat which had continued to run on the surface, had withdrawn beyond the range of the _Ribot’s_ guns and was fleeing away to the south, fighting as it fled. The morning light had quite cleared the mist from the surface of the ocean and Ruth could see the low line of the German boat obscuring itself with gun-gases as its rifles fired. But its shells no longer burst aboard the passenger vessel or spurted up spray from the sea alongside. Far, far to the east and north appeared a speck--a gray, sea-colored speck, sheathing itself in the sparkling white of foam every second or so, casting the sheath of seaspray aside and rushing on gray and dun again--the bow of the destroyer coming up. She was coming up very fast--with a marvelous, leaping swiftness which sent the blood tingling through Ruth.