The next night we were wakened by booming of gunfire and ship rock= ing, We felt sure we were hit but there was no panic, nol a sound, Then the order was women and children on deck, This was all. darkness. We had to climb those straight steel ladders with a man below and one on top to help us up, Dut still no panic or pushing not a sound. When we got up there was no life belt, only about three rickety old life boats—for Tool!t It seems a sub fired two torpedoes at us, one wide and one very near, They think as we were very high out of water went under us—any way our gunner Feplied and atter third shot, the sub was silenced—people on deck who saw it all said they saw trail of torpedoes and saw sub turn turtle were not sure but it silenced the sub, We stayed up till daylight—it was a glorious moonlight night, The next night was worso—to deiberately go down into that pitch binek hold and perhaps have a repetition—we didn't and reached Gib safely after a couple of days.
At Gib went on with a British cons voy to England with only 250 board and we had hammocks—otherwige much the same—no push a pulls only a row of buckets which we had to empty overboard ourselves each time. Tt was awful, The minute arrived £ had a bath—took two soapings to got the worst of it off and left a lovely rim.
Had my hair double shampooed and nails cleaned—feel better now but very very tired.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.