Luther himself not far away, said hoarsely: "I hope to God they don't spill us all in the sea."
It was horrible to feel motion and to be able to see so little. How did they know what they were doing, those seamen up above and the others in the boat? "She's going down," shouted Luther suddenly in a high, shrill voice. "For God's sake, hurry . . ."
The lights of the ship were tilted crazily; perhaps they themselves were tilted; the whole world resolved itself into a crazy pattern of noise, of light, of darkness, of tumult, of spray and of cold.
Daisy Belle said, panting: "Now if they can pull away quick . . . Luther, I'll take an oar."
Mickey was there; quite suddenly he came, lurching, from the roar and tumult and crazy quilt of motion. "It's okay," he was shouting. "It's okay. . . . Now then . . ." But they dropped down, down, down, as if there was never any end of that drop; a wave broke; there was salty cold water everywhere; they were going to be capsized.
She reached backward into the wetness and darkness. Mickey wasn't there; she clutched the seat beneath her. Some force seemed to come up strongly under the little boat, pushing it upward, and there was air again in their faces. Luther Cates was swearing and Gili somewhere was screaming. And then Marcia knew the lifeboat was moving, pulling away from the ship which already stood out a black bulk with lights above them. "We made it," said Daisy Belle harshly. They started then, again, down the long, long, horrible glide into the trough of a wave.
The rest of the night was like that.
Nobody knew when or even if the ship went down. She was a small, crowded Portuguese cargo boat, with a few cabins which were at a premium, so many people wanted to get away from Europe out of Lisbon; and her destination had been Buenos Aires. Some time in the maelstrom her few tilting, blinking lights simply disappeared and nobody noticed it. If other lifeboats were successfully lowered they did not know that, either. Their only preoccupation was the darkness, the waves, the cold, the sea water; the long, sickening glides down, thinking that every second was to be that second which would pitch them into the sea, and then the equally long and in a queer way equally sickening thrust upward. All existence became a matter of clinging to the boat, of huddling together, of trying to row, of trying to bail out sea water. It was a completely instinctive and completely primitive struggle with wind and waves and cold. Horrible, wet cold that stiffened hands and body, so it seemed the blood could not flow through so stiff and hard a substance, as if there could be no life in anybody's heart. At first, spasmodically, the women tried to help; soon they could only cling to the boat, to each other, fight for air, for life.
This went on through the night.
Marcia did not know when she became aware of some of the others in the lifeboat. Alfred Castiogne was there and giving orders about rowing and bailing; he was one of the ship's officers. A sudden, more or less violent flirtation had sprung up between him and Gili on the ship; but probably he was there not because of Gili but because he was in charge of that lifeboat. He was behind Marcia then, at the rudder; she could hear his shouts now and then above the crash of the waves. There were herself and Mickey, Gili and Luther and Daisy Belle Cates. There were two other seamen. It was a small boat, but it was not full. Once she wondered vaguely why more people from the Lerida had not accompanied them; but they were the only passengers, so she supposed that the others, the seamen and ship's officers, had either remained with the ship or taken other lifeboats. They started down another wave and Marcia stopped thinking.
Once there was a sort of lull and Daisy Belle made them drink from her flask of brandy. Marcia's hands were so numb she could scarcely feel the flask. They passed it around, from one awkward, fumbling hand to another. From time to time the men changed places, moved about. Marcia was aware only of the motion, not of the time and order of any of it. Alfred Castiogne and Luther seemed to be directing the efforts of the men, to keep the boat from being swamped. Luther had had some experience with small boats. Alfred Castiogne was a big, dark ruffian of a man, strong as an ox; he took long turns rowing. Once Marcia caught the flash of his white teeth and smelled garlic as he crowded between her and Daisy Belle to crawl forward. Not that there was much use rowing, Marcia thought dimly; but she supposed it was better to try to attack the waves than to be resigned and swamped by them; that must be the theory.
Marcia never knew either when or how she began to feel that they might ride out the storm. Not that, by then, she cared. Nobody cared; they were too numb, too cold, too desperately tired. They were merely organisms, struggling in spite of themselves. Some time, years and years and years after they had gone down into that black and heaving water, Marcia thought in some faraway recess of her mind, I can see Mickey's shoulders. How horribly tired he looks!
She could barely see him. Other shapes were beginning to emerge dimly from the blackness. One of the two seamen, bending over an oar, made a short thick outline; the other looked thin and wizened and wore a stocking cap which very much later began to take on a reddish tone. Daisy Belle had taken another turn at rowing and then crawled back to a place near Marcia. Her nose and chin were sharp and gray and haggard, etched in dreary stone. Gili was huddled ahead of them, her head down in her arms. It was getting to be morning; there was a faint gray light showing at the rims of the world. The waves seemed to be abating in violence.
There were no signs of other lifeboats; although once a barrel floated past and they thought at first it was a man, and another time it was a man, on his face, dead when they reached him. Alfred Castiogne bent down to drag the floating, dark bulk a little out of the water, and to cast it back again. Marcia remembered the way his thick shoulders hunched over, and the moment while the boat drifted and Gili's whimper. But nobody said anything; it seemed so natural an event, so precisely and expectedly part of the pattern of the night.
Gradually the darkness was broken into by a sort of glow, a way ahead, faintly red, like a distant fire, or like the late reflection of a crimson sunset. Only it was toward the east.
The glow and redness slowly grew.
All of them saw it and watched it—dully, at intervals, preoccupied first with that increasing and frightful struggle to keep alive another minute—through another wave.
It was Luther who first said it was a ship; and then they shifted about confusedly, all of them searching in the dim gray light for rockets. They found them in a small locker along with the inadequate supply of dry rations and brackish water, compass and knife and tarpaulin with which the lifeboat had been sparsely equipped. Mickey sent up the rockets. Long streaks of flame curled up above the lifeboat. Some time about then Alfred Castiogne collapsed; he lay in the stern and Luther and one of the seamen moved him. Luther again took an oar, while one of the seamen, the one with the thick strong silhouette, huddled over in the dim light and worked on Castiogne to revive him and did not succeed, for at length he gave up and tried to arrange the third mate fairly comfortably against a seat and went back savagely to rowing. The ship lay dead ahead and had the strange rosy radiance now all about her, but it was not fire.
Marcia was past anything so human, so vital as hope. She watched as if from delirium, as if it didn't matter to her. She heard the men talk; she tried to help in a fumbling way to find the rockets; she saw the streaks of fire curve up at last over the distant ship—above the ship and above that strange rosy radiance, acknowledging their own signals.
Daisy Belle said in a faraway, hoarse voice that mumbled the words: "It's a hospital ship. See the Red Cross on the side."