pression that I had given
them the easier alternative of being drowned. I now saw that I was
mistaken. No such alternative was in their power. There was no longer
a choice between burning and drowning. It now lay between burning and
being devoured by the sharks!

CHAPTER FIFTY NINE.

An awful alternative it was, and for a long while the ill-starred
victims seemed to linger in their choice. Hard choice between two
horrid forms of death! Little did it matter which, and the knowledge of
this rendered them indifferent whether to spring forth or stand still.
Death was before them as well as behind--turn which way they might,
death stared them in the face--soon and certain--and on every side they
saw its threatening arm--before, behind, above, and around them. The
utter hopelessness of escape had numbed their energies--they were
paralysed by despair.

But even in the hour of the most hopeless despair there arrives a crisis
when men will still struggle for life--it is the last struggle--the
final conflict as it were, with death itself. No one yields up life
without this effort, though it be ever so idle. The drowning man does
not voluntarily permit himself to sink below the surface. He still
strives to keep afloat, though he may not have the slightest hope of
being rescued. The effort is partly involuntary--it is the body that
still continues to battle for life, after the mind has resigned all
hope--the last stand that existence makes against annihilation. It may
be a purely mechanical effort--perhaps it is so--but who ever saw a
strong man compelled to part suddenly with life, that did not make such
a struggle? Even the condemned criminal upon the gallows continues to
strive till the breath has parted from his body. Something like this
last despairing effort aroused the energies of that hesitating crowd
that clustered upon the burning barque. The crisis at length came.

The flames were fast rushing forward, and spreading over all the deck.
Their red jets, spurting out beyond the selvage of smoke, began to touch
the bodies of their victims, and pain them with the fierce sting of
fire. It produced no augmentation in their cries of agony. These had
long since reached the climax, and the voices of those who uttered them
had been already raised to their highest pitch. But the close proximity
of the flames, and the absolute certainty of being now destroyed by
them, caused a general movement throughout the