The word went round that it was the fate of the _Kamouraska_, with the futility of her surrender as a means of saving the passengers’ lives, that prompted our captain to flight and fight. Our wireless calls were undoubtedly going up and down the Irish coast and out into the ocean. Within an hour or two, if we could hold out so long, destroyers would be rushing to our rescue. We had nothing to be terribly afraid of with more than an imaginative fear. That imaginative fear was quickened by the seemingly maddened action of our ship. I can best describe her as a leviathan gone insane. If insanity were to overtake a whale it would probably splash the deep in some such frenzy as this—so many angles out of the course one way—then a violent heeling over—so many angles out of the course another way—anyway, anywhere, anything—to get out of that straight, staid line from port to port which makes an ocean-going ship a liner. I admit that in this wild, erratic dashing there was something that alarmed us, and something, too, that made us laugh. It was the comic side of madness, in which you can hardly see the terrible because of the grotesque. By the time we reached life-boat No. 7 there were many signs that neither officers nor passengers were going to take more chances than they were obliged to. At No. 5 on one side of us a young officer was on top, peeling off the tarpaulin covering. At No. 9 on the other side some of the crew were already mounted, examining supplies and oars. At our own boat, cranks were being fitted to the davits to swing the boat outward. All along the line similar preparations were in progress, while men and women—luckily we had no children on board—carrying such wraps and hand-bags as they might reasonably take, stood in groups, waiting for what was to happen next. Our view of the sea was largely cut off here by the bulk of the life-boats, though wherever there was a chink there was also a cluster of heads. So many saw periscopes—and so many didn’t see them—that it became a mild joke. In general we surmised that if a U-boat was cruising round us at all she had only been porpoising—sticking up her periscope for a second or two to get a look round, and withdrawing it before it could be seen by any eye not on that very spot. The girl in the yashmak and I arrived so late on the scene that there were no places left by the rail, and we were obliged to content ourselves with second-hand information as to what was taking place. Our excitement had, therefore, a lack of point, like that of the small boy behind the line of grown-up people watching a procession. We fell back in the end into a kind of alcove, where, being partially protected from wind and tumult, we could speak to each other without shouting.