creasing list to starboard; she was visibly settling in
the water; and, to crown all, the crowd of miners who upon the first
alarm had taken possession of the boat-deck were refusing to leave it,
and a brisk struggle between them and the seamen was proceeding, though
as yet no firearms were being used. But I knew Hoskins's temper; he was
by no means a patient man, or one given to much verbal argument. It was
usually a word and a blow with him, and not infrequently the blow came
first; I knew also that he habitually carried a revolver in his pocket
when at sea. I should not, therefore, have been at all surprised to
hear the crack of the weapon at any moment.

I had just managed to extricate myself from the crowd, and was making my
way toward the purser's cabin, when from the interior of the ship, and
almost beneath my feet, there came a deep _boom_, and I knew that the
after bulkhead of the engine-room had given way, and that the moments of
the _Saturn_ were numbered.

"No use to hunt up the purser, now," I thought; and I made a dash for
the boat-deck, to see if I could render any assistance there. But I was
too late; the sound of the bursting bulkhead, coming on top of the
previous alarms, was all that was needed to produce the panic I had all
along been dreading, and in an instant the decks were alive with frantic
people, all desperately fighting their way upward to the boat-deck,
where pandemonium now raged supreme, and where pistols were popping
freely, showing that Hoskins was by no means the only man in the ship
who went armed.

Now, what was the best thing for me to do? Could I do _anything_
useful? I stood on the outskirts of that seething, maddened crowd, and
watched men and women striving desperately together, trampling each
other remorselessly down; shrieking, cursing, fighting; no longer human,
but reduced by the fear of death to the condition of rabid, ferocious
brutes. No, I could do nothing: as well go down below and attempt to
stay the inrush of water with my two hands, as strive by argument to
restore those people to reason; while, as for _force_, what could my
strength avail against that of hundreds? No, they had all gone mad,
and, in their madness, were destroying themselves, rendering it
impossible to launch the boats, and so dooming themselves and everybody
else to death. It was awful! That scene often revisits me in dreams,
even to this day, and I awake sweating and trembling with the
u