8 /**/ XIV The women in Lifeboat No. 8 took up the oars and rowed on, encouraged by the masthead lights of a ship that was now in the near distance, no more, it seemed, than three miles away. The cold made them miserable, for even the heaviest fur coat was little protection, and many of the women were thinly dressed at best. Dr. Leader wore a blue serge suit and a steamer hat, another woman was clad in an evening gown and white satin slippers. But the light was their hope, their beacon, so they steeled themselves and rowed toward it. With Gladys still at the tiller, the Countess rowed while comforting Maria Peñasco, who sat sobbing beside her, the young bride’s face twisted in such raw anguish that the others could not bear to look at her. Mrs. Bucknell took up an oar, proud to be rowing beside a genuine countess and stopping only when her hands became too blistered to continue. Margaret Swift, a hardy forty-six-year-old churchgoing lady, took an oar and never put it down.
