When they reached the deck there was something that looked like an enormous drowning cockroach trying to crawl out of the water four hundred yards away. Round it there seemed to be a mass of drowning flies. "It's not a pleasant sight, is it?" said Hudson. "But it's good to know they were all fighting men, ready to kill or be killed. No women and children among them! The _Lusitania_ must have looked much worse." "My brother is on board! Are you not trying to save them?" gasped the officer. Hudson took out the little shoe again and looked at it. Then he turned to the German boat's crew, where they huddled, sick with fear, amidships. "Take your boat and pick up as many as you can," he said. "It is not safe--not till she sinks," a guttural voice replied. Almost on the word the cruiser went down with a rush. The sleek waters and the white mists closed above her, while the _Morning Glory_ rocked again like a child's cradle. "That is true," said Matthew Hudson to the shivering figure beside him. "And we've got as many as we can handle on the ship. If we took more of you aboard, according to the laws laid down in your text-books, you'd cut our throats and call us idiotic Yankees for trusting you. "Please don't weep. We sent out a call a minute ago for the _Betsey Barton_ and the _Dusty Miller_ and the _Christmas Day_. I'm not an effete humanitarian myself; but the men on these trawlers aren't bad sorts. I hope they'll pick up your brother." V THE _LUSITANIA_ WAITS On a stormy winter's night three skippers--averaging three score years and five--were discussing the news, around a roaring fire, in the parlor of the White Horse Inn. Five years ago they had retired, each on a snug nest-egg. They were looking forward to a mellow old age in port and a long succession of evenings at the White Horse, where they gathered to debate the politics of their district. The war had given them new topics; but Captain John Kendrick--who had become a parish councilor and sometimes carried bulky blue documents in his breast-pocket, displaying the edges with careful pride--still kept the local pot a-boiling. He was mainly successful on Saturday nights, when the _Gazette_, their weekly newspaper, appeared. It was edited by a Scot named Macpherson, who had learned his job on the _Arbroath Free Press_. "Macpherson will never be on the council now," said Captain Kendrick. "There's a rumor that he's a freethinker. He says that Christianity has been proved a failure by the war." "Well, these chaps of ours now," said Captain Davidson, "out at sea on a night like this, trying to kill Germans. It's necessary, I know, because the Germans would kill our own folks if we gave 'em a chance. But don't it prove that there's no use for Christianity? In modern civilization, I mean."