Farmingdale was the highest-ranking officer, which put him in command of the raft with Eddie as his second. For all his reservations about the second mate, Eddie was glad to have the ship’s navigating officer on board. Better yet, Sparks reported that his SOS signal had been answered, meaning there was a good chance of rescue when the storm subsided.
At midday, with rain still falling on and off, someone spotted between swells a distant lifeboat riding low—perhaps overcrowded. They broke out the raft’s oars, and Eddie made an oarlock for each by twisting a bight of lifeline around it—a trick he’d learned from his pamphlet. A gunner and a fireman rose onto their knees and took an oar each, men anchoring them fore and aft. When they managed to get close enough to see the boat more clearly, they found it empty and swamped. It must be Eddie’s boat, number four—the one that had gone off prematurely. This was excellent luck. Compared with a pontoon raft, a lifeboat was a palace: 297 cubic feet of shelter, equipment, and supplies, not to mention a sail and a tiller. Eddie’s abandon-ship package would be tied inside, containing a sextant, blankets, and extra waterproof rations. The cigarettes would likely be soaked, but the bottle of South African rum would be more than welcome.
They lashed the raft to the boat, and men took turns boarding and bailing. To Eddie’s confusion, the boat was marked number two—the first mate’s—yet there was a sack tied in the very spot where he’d tied his own. Mystified, he pried open this sack and found it crammed with books bloated by seawater into a sodden mash. With a twitch of fear, he understood: only one man in the world would rescue from a sinking ship a sack containing just books. And he’d last seen the bosun at the tiller of the first mate’s boat, number two, which had gone off first.
He explained his findings to Farmingdale. “There were seventeen men on that boat, with life vests,” Eddie said. “We must search for survivors.”
Farmingdale made a skeptical gesture, but Eddie persisted to a chorus of agreement from the other men. Farmingdale shrugged and remained on the raft, recalcitrant, while the rest of them prepared the boat for a search. Pugh, the old salt, pronounced the wind still too high to raise a sail. A set of oars and oarlocks had been lost from the lifeboat, but the spares were stowed. They would row in a square, a thousand strokes in each direction, blowing the whistles on their Mae Wests every five strokes. Everyone, including Farmingdale, moved from the raft onto the boat, but they left the raft attached, unsure how many survivors they might find. Eddie carefully opened the steel cylinder containing emergency food rations and distributed a portion of pemmican and two malted milk tablets to each man, along with six ounces of water from the jug—the contents of which had been changed just four days earlier—in an enamel measuring cup.
Eddie’s ears began playing tricks as soon as the rowing began. Every pause seemed full of human-sounding cries, but they completed the eastern portion of the square without sighting anyone. They turned south with fresh rowers. Three hundred strokes in, several men heard a faint whistle, and Roger gave a shout from the bow. Abeam to port, Eddie made out an intermittent fleck of what looked like flotsam. As they rowed toward it slowly on the high seas, he saw that it was the bosun and Wyckoff lashed together. Carefully, they extended oars to the floaters and hauled them over the side of the lifeboat. Both men lay at the bottom, shivering violently, then lost consciousness. Sparks removed his leg brace and spread himself on top of the waterlogged pair to warm them.
At sunset, the sky swung open like a hatch, revealing an exotic cargo of pink and orange. They had searched the remainder of the day but found no one else. The swells began to moderate, and Eddie distributed another round of rations. Wyckoff and the bosun were able to eat and drink, although Wyckoff said little and the bosun not a word. Eddie found it eerie to have his nemesis be so silent. It was like having the bosun’s ghost on board.
As darkness fell and the weather calmed, everyone’s spirits rose. The discovery of the lifeboat virtually assured that they were in range of where the Elizabeth Seaman had gone down; help would likely reach them the following day. The best course now was to keep a sharp lookout and stay with the current, which rescuers would take into account when choosing where to search. They lowered the sea anchor, a cone-shaped canvas bag, over the bow of the lifeboat to fix them to the current. They left the raft attached, to make themselves more visible to planes. Then they set watches and took turns sleeping huddled together at the bottom of the boat on life preservers, or sitting on the thwarts with their heads against the gunwales. Eddie made a notch with his jackknife on the thwart where he slept, marking the passage of twenty-four hours away from the Elizabeth Seaman.
They woke shivering, heavy dew on their sodden clothing. Eddie distributed rations of food and water. As the sun rose, Wyckoff told them that a rogue wave had overturned boat two in the storm, sending all seventeen men into the sea. Everyone had managed to stay with the boat, clinging to the lifelines on its gunwales and waiting for a chance to flip it back over, when a shark had attacked the second cook. Some men swam away in panic at his screams; others, including Wyckoff and the bleeding man, scrambled onto the overturned boat. This proved an error, for when another wave righted it, they were tossed into a frenzy of sharks. Wyckoff had been spared somehow. He could hardly swim, but his Mae West had kept him afloat. At daybreak he caught sight of the bosun, who swam to him. They had been trying to reach the swamped lifeboat ever since.
Eddie kept his eyes on the bosun as Wyckoff spoke, wondering what kind of terror it must have taken to silence such a man.
When the sun was up, they raised the lifeboat mast, and Eddie ran up the yellow flag that was among the boat’s emergency provisions. Shortly after noon, they spotted a plane flying low. Everyone screamed and jumped from boat and raft, waving their shirts—except the bosun, who sat quietly at the bottom of the boat. The plane flew away, apparently not having seen them, a blow that left all of them spent. Still, no one doubted that the plane had been searching for survivors of the Elizabeth Seaman, and hours of daylight remained. Four men stood every watch, one facing each direction. Eddie grated his eyes against the line of horizon. It seemed always on the verge of yielding up a ship, but hours of warm, clear weather—perfect rescue weather—passed without any further sightings.