They climbed up into a pandemonium indescribable, a wild torrent of sound.
There was light here that shone in a great flare through billows of fog, showing the monster form of a great vessel towering above them with only a few yards of mist-wreathed water between.

The deck on which they stood sloped upwards at an acute angle, and still from below there came the clamour of escaping steam accompanied by a spasmodic throbbing that was like the futile beating of giant wings against Titanic bars.
A knot of men were struggling to lower a boat by the ghostly glare that lit the night about them, clambering and slipping against the rails, while a voice from beyond the fog-curtain yelled through a megaphone unintelligible commands.
All these things were registered upon Saltash's brain, his quick perception leaping from point to point with a mental agility that was wholly outside all conscious volition on his part.

He was driven by circumstance as a bird is driven by storm, and he went before it undismayed, missing no chance of refuge.
A life-buoy hanging beside the hatch caught his eye as he glanced swiftly around and in a second he pounced upon it.

Toby slipped from his shoulder as he bent, and slipping awoke.

But he only lay and stared with dazed eyes at the man frantically unlashing the rope, as one who looked on from afar.
Then Larpent was with them again.