o hands
locked together in a grip so tense that the knuckles shone white in the
light that came streaming in through the scuttles in the ship's side,
his eyes were glassy and staring into vacancy with an intensity of gaze
which plainly showed that the whole dreadful scene was again unfolding
itself before his mental vision, and the perspiration was streaming down
his forehead and cheeks. Then the table steward came up, and, removing
his soup, asked him whether he would take cold beef, ham-and-tongue, or
roast chicken. The sound of the man's voice seemed to bring the dazed
chief officer to himself again; he sighed heavily, and as though
relieved to find himself where he was, considered for a moment, and,
deciding in favour of cold beef, resumed his narrative.

"The next thing that I can remember, gentlemen," he continued, "was that
I was on the poop with the skipper, second and third mates, the
carpenter, and a few others, lighting for our lives as we strove to keep
back the frantic passengers and prevent them from interfering with the
hands who were cutting the gripes and working furiously to sling the
boats outboard. We carried four boats at the davits, two on each
quarter, and those were all that were available, for the others were
buried under the raffle and wreckage of the fallen masts, and it would
have taken hours to clear them, with the probability that, when got at,
they would have been found smashed to smithereens, while a blind man
could have told by the feel of the ship that she was settling fast, and
might sink under us at any moment. At last one of the boats was cleared
and ready for lowering, and as many of the women and children as she
would carry were bundled into her, the third mate, two able seamen, and
myself being sent along with them by the skipper to take care of them.
I would willingly have stayed behind, for there were other women and
children--to say nothing of men passengers--to be saved, but I knew that
a certain number of us Jacks must of necessity go in each boat to handle
and navigate her, and there was no time to waste in arguing the matter;
so in I tumbled, just as I was, and the next moment we were rising and
falling in the water alongside, the tackle blocks were cleverly
unhooked, and we out oars and shoved off, pulling to a safe distance and
then lying on our oars to wait for the rest.

"I shall never, to my dying day, forget the look of that ship as we
pulled away from her. The