oor Captain Rainhill, had they but helped instead of
hindered, all might have been well. Many hands make light and quick
work; and had every man there devoted but a tithe of the energy he was
now displaying to the task of helping the crew to launch the boats it is
possible that every life on board might have been saved. But, as it
was, the boats hung there at the davits, crowded far beyond their utmost
capacity with men who ignorantly sought to lower themselves, while
others fought and struggled with the occupants for the places that they
had secured; and nothing useful was done.

Meanwhile, although not one of that crowd of mad folk seemed to be aware
of the fact, the ship was settling down with awful rapidity. Already
she was sunk to her channels, and was heaving heavily upon the swell
with the slow, deadly sluggishness of movement that, to the initiated,
told so plainly that her end was nigh.

Now, utterly hopeless as Leslie's future appeared to him, impossible as
seemed to be the task of ever rehabilitating himself in the eyes of the
world, crushed as he was by the burden of his disgrace, and glad as he
was at the prospect of deliverance from all his misery through the
kindly agency of death, it was characteristic of him that, even now, at
the supreme moment of his impending deliverance, his self-respect
imperiously demanded of him that at all costs must he eschew even the
faintest taint of so cowardly an act as that of suicide; if death were
really close at hand--as it certainly appeared to be--well and good; it
was what he was hoping for, and would be thrice welcome. Nevertheless,
he felt it incumbent upon himself that he should take full advantage of
such slender aids to escape as happened to present themselves; and
accordingly, as the bows of the ship became depressed, while the stern
rose in the air, telling that the _Golden Fleece_ was about to take her
final dive, he mechanically sprang to the taffrail and, disengaging a
life-buoy that hung there, passed it over his shoulders and up under his
armpits. Then, climbing upon the rail, he leapt unhesitatingly into the
black, heaving water below him at the precise moment when a loud wail of
indescribable anguish and despair from the frantic crowd fighting about
the boats told that to them, too, had at last come the realisation of
imminent doom.

As Leslie struck the water and floated there, supported by the
life-buoy, the rudder and stern-post of the ship ho