ss night. But their impact against her was almost as if they had
hit a pier. The collision sent them reeling about the pilot-house. As
they drove past they saw her go down, her stern a splintered mass of
wreckage, in which men were frantically struggling.

"That's a granite-lugger! See her go down, like a stone!" gasped Mate
Bangs. "My God! What do you suppose she has done to us forward?"

"Get there. Get there!" roared Captain Mayo. "Get there and report,
sir!"

But before the chief mate was half-way down the ladder on his way
the wailing voice of the lookout reported disaster. "Hole under the
water-line forward," he cried.

"There are men in the water back there, sir," said a quartermaster.

"We're making water fast in the forward compartment," came a voice
through the speaking-tube.

Already they in the pilot-house could hear the ululation of women in the
depths of the ship, and then the husky clamor of the many voices of men
drowned the shriller cries.

Captain Mayo had seen the survivors from the schooner struggling in the
water. But he rang for full speed ahead and ordered the quartermaster to
aim her into the north, knowing that land lay in that direction.

"Eight hundred lives on my shoulders and a hole in her," he told
himself, while all his world of hope and ambition seemed rocking to
ruin. "I can't wait to pick up those poor devils."

In a few minutes--in so few minutes that all his calculations as to his
location were upset--the _Montana_ plowed herself to a shuddering halt
on a shoal, her bow lifting slightly. And when the engines were stopped
she rested there, sturdily upright, steady as an island. But in her
saloon the men and women who fought and screamed and cursed, beating to
and fro in windrows of humanity like waves in a cavern, were convinced
that the shuddering shock had signaled the doom of the vessel.
Half-dressed men, still dizzy with sleep, confused by dreams which
blended with the terrible reality, trampled the helpless underfoot,
seeking exit from the saloon.

The hideous uproar which announced panic was a loud call to the master
of the vessel. He understood what havoc might be wrought by the brutal
senselessness of the struggle. He ran from the pilot-house, stepping on
the feet of the general manager, who was stumbling about in bewildered
fashion.

"Call all the crew to stations and guard the exits," Captain Mayo
commanded the second mate.

On his precipitate way to the saloon