Then the St. Luke whistled five times, and the stewardess turned pale.  For a brief space, before they understood what had happened, the twins supposed she was going to be sick.  But it wasn’t that that was the matter with her, for after a moment’s staring at nothing with horror on her face she pounced on them and pulled them bodily out of their berths, regardless by which end, and threw them on the floor anyhow.  Then she plunged about and produced life-jackets; then she rushed down the passage flinging open the doors of the other cabins; then she whirled back again and tried to tie the twins into their life-jackets, but with hands that shook so that the strings immediately came undone again; and all the time she was calling out “Quick—­quick—­quick—­” There was a great tramping of feet on deck and cries and shouting.

The curtains of the opposite berths yawned asunder and out came the Germans, astonishingly cured of their sea-sickness, and struggled vigorously into their life-jackets and then into fur coats, and had the fur coats instantly pulled off again by a very energetic steward who ran in and said fur coats in the water were death-traps,—­a steward so much bent on saving people that he began to pull off the other things the German ladies had on as well, saying while he pulled, disregarding their protests, that in the water Mother Nature was the best.  “Mother Nature—­Mother Nature,” said the steward, pulling; and he was only stopped just in the nick of time by the stewardess rushing in again and seeing what was happening to the helpless Germans.

Anna-Rose, even at that moment explanatory, pointed out to Anna-Felicitas, who had already grasped the fact, that no doubt there was a submarine somewhere about.  The German ladies, seizing their valuables from beneath their pillows, in spite of the steward assuring them they wouldn’t want them in the water, demanded to be taken up and somehow signalled to the submarine, which would never dare do anything to a ship containing its own flesh and blood—­and an American ship, too—­there must be some awful mistake—­but anyhow they must be saved—­there would be terrible trouble, that they could assure the steward and the twins and the scurrying passers-by down the passage, if America allowed two Germans to be destroyed—­and anyhow they would insist on having their passage money refunded....

The German ladies departed down the passage, very incoherent and very unhappy but no longer sick, and Anna-Felicitas, clinging to the edge of her berth, feeling too miserable to mind about the submarine, feebly wondered, while the steward tied her properly into her life-jacket, at the cure effected in them.  Anna-Rose seemed cured too, for she was buttoning a coat round Anna-Felicitas’s shoulders, and generally seemed busy and brisk, ending by not even forgetting their precious little bag of money and tickets and passports, and fastening it round her neck in spite of the steward’s assuring her that it would drag her down in the water like a stone tied to a kitten.