(3 of 5)
Into lifeboats Nos. 2, 4 and 6 on the port side, accordingly, most of the women and children were sent. But the boats caught on plates, would not slide down the ship's tilted side. A fall gave way and the prow of No. 4 dropped, spilling babies, mothers into the rushing waters. The ponderous arm of a davit broke, pitched into No. 2 as she hung on the side of the Vestris, crushed skulls and arms, smashed through the bottom. Again wail of child and despairing shriek of mother mingled as another boatload was scattered into the grey seethe. Upturned faces blurred, vanished from sight down the long waves.
Frantically the crew struggled to free No. 6 from her wire cables. For two hours they worked without success. When the Vestris nosed under, No. 6, still fast, was dragged down with her; and a third boatload of women and children was strewn upon the sea.
Women and children were first—to drown.
Of other boats on the port side, only Nos. 10 and 14 were picked up by rescuers. On the starboard side, No. 9 was the first lowered. It had been filled by frightened members of the crew. It foundered on reaching the water. Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 13 were found by rescue ships.
Every boat picked up was more or less filled with survivors, from 19 in No. 1 to 43 in No. 3.
As for the motor-driven lifeboat carried by the Vestris and used constantly as a tender, not one word was heard of her.
Man v. Sea. It was 2:30 p. m. when the Vestris lurched on a billow to starboard and rolled under with a gulp, in froth and spume and reeling eddy. A few men, the last on board, sprinted across her horizontal side and dived. Captain Carey watched them, clung to his bridge.
Of the 24 hours that followed, as wretches floundered in tepid waters known to be thick with sharks, Quartermaster Lionel Licorish, flyweight black from Barbados, was hero. To lifeboat No. 14, bobbing on the waves, occupied only by one unconscious man, he swam. Finding no oars he plunged overboard and retrieved some. Then cruising through wreckage he rescued some 20 souls.
The night was stars one hour, rain squalls the next. Across the waste of torn water there shone no lights of a rescuing ship. From time to time, sparingly, flares would be lit in the drifting lifeboats.
A Negro floated on a plank, a clasp knife open in his hand, for sharks or men.
Major Yashio Inouye, military attache of the Japanese embassy at Buenos Aires, dropped his arms, strength forespent in efforts to protect his wife, Mme. Teruko Inouye. Then her strength revived; she held him in her arms for hours, and there he died. So also did Mrs. Norman Batten of Brooklyn support her husband until he died.
But early Tuesday morning a searchlight swept the sea. The rescue ships were now arriving: the American Shipper of the American Merchant Lines, the French tanker Myriam, the North German Lloyd liner Berlin, the battleship Wyoming. Thereafter until Tuesday noon the rescue work proceeded.