out into the cabin together,
the smoke in front of us, forward, turned red and then went all to
flame, and right in the midst of it, hurrying toward us, we saw the
overseer. He tripped on a hassock or something and fell and the flame
literally swallowed him alive. We sprang through an open stateroom and
climbed a wheelhouse stair to the hurricane deck. There we saw no one,
but through the crackle and roar of the flame, which a light breeze
behind us sent straight up into the darkness, I heard the voice of my
father, twice, at his post in front of the skylights, and the answer of
the engine bells showed that your uncle Dan and the engineers were
sticking to their places. We were landing in a strong eddy under a point
and didn't have to round to. The boat was wonderfully quiet. I even
heard--probably because the shore was so close ahead of us--the first
mate--same that's with us here now--heard him ordering the stage run out
over the water, as always when about to land. I heard the clerks and
others telling the passengers to 'keep cool' and 'not crowd,' saying
there was room and time for every one.

"The pilot-house was burning brightly on one side but it was so wrapped
in smoke that your uncle Dan was hid from Phyllis and me till the boat
hit the bank. Then the breeze gave us a glimpse of him as it curled the
whole blaze forward so that it overarched the people who filled the
front stairs and gangway, waiting to swarm off across the stage. That
brought panic and the panic brought death. Some male passengers--we
couldn't see, but our hearing was like sight--had got all the women and
children to the front of the crowd and a few even partly out on the
stage, over the water, to be the first put ashore.

"When the boat's nose struck the shore the back part of the crowd
thought the landing was made and began to push, and there were no men in
front to push back--for some of the boat's family, missing Phyllis and
me, had run aft to find us--and when that smoke rolled down on every one
the push became a rush and suddenly two or three women were screaming at
one edge of the stage, with nothing to lay hold on but one another.

"We heard their cries and the cry of the crowd, through the crackling of
the fire. My mother tried to save them, with her three children clinging
to her, and the whole six fell into the black shadow of the freight
guards and the swift eddy drew them under the boat's hull before a thing
could be done except