One of the merchant crew of the _Antilles_ had climbed upon the upturned bow of a broken boat and was seated astride the stern. Every wave was breaking over his head and he clung to his precarious perch with his arms and legs, like a jockey wrapped around the neck of a runaway horse. How he managed to stick there was a puzzle. He had drifted several hundred yards clear of the rest of the wreckage but our executive had an eye on him. “Skipper, I think we had better circle around again,” said Captain Kittinger. The “skipper” (Porter) replied that he would like to “go get that fellow first,” pointing to the man on the piece of boat. “Go ahead, skipper,” was the answer, and before the yacht swung off to fetch another circle we steered close to this lonely castaway and tossed him the bight of a heaving-line. He grabbed it with a death grip and we hauled him over the rail, but he was almost unconscious from cold and exhaustion and we had to pry his fingers open to make him let go the line. The doctor scored an “assist” on this rescue. These unfortunates had been flung into the sea in a moment, some of them scrambling half-dressed from their bunks. They became chilled to the bone, half-strangled in the breaking waves, worn out with trying to cling to overturned boats, submerged live-rafts, doors and hatches and benches, the flotsam spewed up by the stricken ship as she dived under. Some of them swam from overloaded rafts to find help elsewhere, or floundered without life-belts until gallant comrades lent them a hand. It was a dreadful business, new to the _Corsair_ and _Alcedo_; but all too familiar to the maritime annals of the war. [Illustration: THE ANTILLES CROWDED WITH TROOPS ON HER LAST VOYAGE TO FRANCE] [Illustration: THE ALCEDO PICKS UP THE ANTILLES SURVIVORS] It is not easy to quench a sailor’s sense of humor even in the presence of death and disaster, and Ensign Schanze wrote, in a letter to his mother: The commander of a supply ship bound to New York promised me that he would look Dad up if he could possibly do so, and tell you how I was getting on. His ship was in our party on the morning the _Antilles_ was torpedoed, and maybe he got sore at us for letting a submarine scare the wits out of him. Our yacht had to stop and fish a lot of very wet citizens out of the ocean, and the last view I had of his ship was in a great cloud of smoke, and he was crowding on full speed to make his get-away. He was going like a scared rabbit. He never even waved good-bye. Another gentleman who promised to call on Dad was a naval officer in charge of the gun crew of the _Antilles_. I yanked him out of the ocean and helped make him at home on the _Corsair_ during the time between the sinking of the ship and the return to our base.