_Joan_ had been as handsome a craft as ever
left the stocks when we hauled out of dock at London some three weeks
earlier; but now--her bows were crumpled in until she was as flat
for'ard as the end of a sea-chest; her decks were lumbered high with the
wreckage of her masts and spars; the standing and running rigging was
hanging down over her sides in bights; and she had settled so low in the
water that her channels were already buried; while her poop was crowded
with madly struggling figures, from which arose a confused babel of
sound--shouting, screaming, and cursing--than which I have never heard
anything more awful in all my life.

"When we had pulled off about fifty fathoms the third mate, who was in
charge of the boat, ordered us to lie upon our oars; and presently we
saw that the second quarter-boat was being lowered. She reached the
water all right, and then we heard the voice of the second mate yelling
to the hands on deck to let run the after tackle. The next moment, as
the sinking ship rolled heavily to starboard, we saw the stern of the
lowered boat lifted high out of the water, the bow dipped under, and in
a second, as it seemed, she had swamped, and the whole load of people,
some twenty in number, were struggling and drowning alongside as they
strove ineffectually to scramble back into the swamped boat, which had
now by some chance become released from the tackle that had held her.

"For a moment we, in the boat that had got safely away, sat staring,
dumb and paralysed with horror at the dreadful scene that was enacting
before our eyes. But the next moment those of us who were at the oars
started madly backing and pulling to swing the boat round and pull in to
the help of the poor wretches who were perishing only a few fathoms away
from us. We had hardly got the boat round, however, when Mr Gibson,
the third mate, gave the order for us to hold water.

"`We mustn't do it,' he said. `The boat is already loaded as deep as
she will swim, and the weight of even one more person would suffice to
swamp her! As it is, it will take us all our time, and tax our
seamanship to the utmost, to keep her afloat; you can see for yourselves
that it would be impossible for us to squeeze more than one additional
person in among us, and, even if we had the room, we could not get that
one in over the gunnel without swamping the craft. To attempt such a
thing would therefore only be to throw away uselessly the lives of al