the coils of rope.
Nobody appeared to notice her, although the quarter-deck was fast
filling with persons driven back by the fire, yet still shrinking
from the terror and uncertainty of the sea. She thought: "It is but
death--why should I fear? The waves are at hand, to save me from all
suffering." And the collective horror of hundreds of beings did not so
overwhelm her as she had both fancied and feared; the tragedy of each
individual life was lost in the confusion, and was she not a sharer in
their doom?

Suddenly, a man stood before her with a cork life-preserver in his
hands, and buckled it around her securely, under the arms. He was
panting and almost exhausted, yet he strove to make his voice firm, and
even cheerful, as he said:

"We fought the cowardly devils as long as there was any hope. Two boats
are off, and two capsized; in ten minutes more every soul must take to
the water. Trust to me, and I will save you or die with you!"

"What else can I do?" she answered.

With a few powerful strokes of an axe, he broke off the top of the
pilot-house, bound two or three planks to it with ropes, and dragged the
mass to the bulwarks.

"The minute this goes," he then said to her, "you go after it, and I
follow. Keep still when you rise to the surface."

She left the shrouds, took hold of the planks at his side, and they
heaved the rude raft into the sea. In an instant she was seized and
whirled over the side; she instinctively held her breath, felt a shock,
felt herself swallowed up in an awful, fathomless coldness, and then
found herself floating below the huge towering hull which slowly drifted
away.

In another moment there was one at her side. "Lay your hand on my
shoulder," he said; and when she did so, swam for the raft, which they
soon reached. While she supported herself by one of the planks he so
arranged and bound together the pieces of timber that in a short time
they could climb upon them and rest, not much washed by the waves. The
ship drifted further and further, casting a faint, though awful, glare
over the sea, until the light was suddenly extinguished, as the hull
sank.

The dawn was in the sky by this time, and as it broadened they could
see faint specks here and there, where others, like themselves, clung to
drifting spars. Mrs. Lawrie shuddered with cold and the reaction from an
excitement which had been far more powerful than she knew at the time.

Her preserver then took off his coat, wra