The remaining late occupants of the boat attached themselves along the sides and awaited succour with what patience they could. Then a muffled sound like an internal explosion came from within the stricken hull as a bulkhead went. The great ship lurched sickeningly above them as a wall totters to its fall. Cecily looked up and saw for a moment the figure of the Captain standing on the end of the bridge; true to his grand traditions he was staying by his ship to the last. She listed over further and began to settle rapidly. Then, and only then, the Captain climbed slowly over the rail and dived. The stern of the ship rose slowly into the air, then swiftly slid forward with a sound like a great sob and vanished beneath the surface. One of the life-boats approached the capsized jolly-boat, and the figures that clung to her were hauled, dripping, one by one into the stern. Then they picked up the Captain, clinging to a grating, an angry man. He scowled round at the long green slopes of the sea and shook his fist. "The curs!" he said. "The dirty scum.... Women on board.... No warning...." Anger and salt water choked him. "They wouldn't even give me a gun because I was a passenger ship. Unarmed, carrying women, torpedoed without warning.... I'll spit in the face of every German I meet from here to Kingdom Come!" A little elderly lady with a bonnet perched awry on her thin grey hair suddenly began a hymn in a high quavering soprano. "That's right, ma'am," said the Captain approvingly, as he wrung the water out of his clothes. "There's nothing like singing to cure sea-sickness. And we shan't be here very long." He pointed to the high bows of a rapidly approaching ship. "One of our Armed Merchant Cruisers, I fancy." He waved to the other boats to close nearer. He was no mere optimist; before a quarter of an hour had elapsed the boats were strung out in a line towing from a rope that led from the bows of the Cruiser. A hastily improvised boatswain's stool was lowered from a davit, and one by one the passengers, then the crew, and finally the officers of the torpedoed liner were swung into the air and hoisted inboard while the Armed Merchant Cruiser continued her course. The sea-sick Cecily, swaying dizzily for the second time that day between sky and water, looked down at the tumbling boats beneath her and for a moment had a glimpse of the stout American and the Fourth Officer. They were both standing gazing up after her as she was whisked skyward. Their mouths were open, and the expression on their faces gave Cecily a feeling of being wafted out of a world she was altogether too good for.