Page:The Lusitania's Last Voyage (lusitaniaslastvo00lauriala).djvu/37

 but on turning to see I found that it was one of the aërials of the wireless that stretched from topmast to topmast.

The present style of life belt, or rather jacket, is not the old-fashioned kind filled with hard cork, but a larger and more bulky affair filled with fibre, and when you have it on you look and feel like a padded football player, especially around the shoulders. When I shook this wire off my head, it caught me around the shoulders on the soft pad, and I couldn't shake it off. It took me down under the water and turned me upside down. I tell you I "kicked." I came up none the worse for my ducking, for it simply reminded me of one of my various trips down to see "Susy the Mermaid" when I was a youngster at Camp Asquam and the older boys used to duck us youngsters anywhere from five to fifteen times a day, according to the unpardonable sins we were supposed to