Then came the paralysing shock, and the tremendous roar of the exploding depth-charge. Rolling completely over, the doomed U-boat began to fill rapidly. Struggling for life, half-immersed in the oil-tinged swirling water, gasping in the black, petrol- and nitric-acid-laden fumes, von Brockdorff-Giespert gave himself up for lost. His senses deserted him. In an insensible condition he was whirled, by a curious whim of fate, through a gaping hole in the U-boat's bilge. While the rest of his companions in piracy were caught like rats in a trap in their metal tomb, the Staff-kapitan-leutnant was impelled to the surface. Well it was for him that he wore a life-saving waistcoat. He had worn it day and night during the trip; surreptitiously lest any of the crew should make merry at the arrogant Junker's expense. It helped to save his life: the _Bolero's_ boat completed the task. Daybreak found the rescued Hun comfortably in bed in one of the officers' cabins--comfortable as far as could be expected while suffering from a broken collar-bone and various minor bruises and contusions. He was glad to find himself alive, but in his innate arrogance he could find neither means nor desire to express his gratitude to his rescuers. Nor was he exactly comfortable in his mind. That little incident of the hospital ship _Bentali_ persisted in recurring. There might be awkward questions asked. But never mind: the English would be afraid to take reprisals upon him. They looked like losing the war, consequently they would treat their prisoners with consideration lest vengeance overtook them. It was a truly Prussian view, and one almost implicitly believed in throughout Germany. It accounted for the humane treatment of German prisoners in England. Only those who are bound to win can, according to Prussian ideas, override all the articles of the Geneva Convention, With them war was a demonstration of brutality--relentless and pitiless. The vanquished was expected to receive no mercy. When the Huns were worsted they hardly expected clemency, and when, as prisoners of war, they received both clemency and a certain amount of consideration they could only put it down to the faint-heartedness of their captors, who, knowing that they were on the losing side, were anxious to ingratiate themselves with victorious Prussia. "By Jove! What a pity we've hauled him out of the ditch!" exclaimed Seton, after he had visited the prisoner and had courteously inquired after his health. "The fellow looked at me as if I were a Boche conscript. I'd like to have him in the ship's company for a week--no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't like to think that my men would have to endure his precious society for five minutes." So for the next forty-eight hours Count Otto von Brockdorff-Giespert was left severely alone by the officers of H.M.S. _Bolero_, the one exception being the doctor, whose efforts for his injured enemy were untiring.