hem knew destiny as a thing to fear, and made haste to flee
from it. Many of them, moreover, had been sleeping low down in the
forward part of the ship; they had heard strange noises, had seen water
washing about where no water should be, and they were frightened. There
was, however, no discrimination between classes in putting the women
into the boats. The woman with a tattered shawl over her head, the woman
with a sable coat over her nightdress, the woman clasping a baby, and
the woman clutching a packet of trinkets had all an equal chance; side
by side they were handed on to the harsh and uncomfortable thwarts of
the lifeboats; the wife of the millionaire sat cheek by jowl with a
dusty stoker and a Russian emigrant, and the spoiled woman of the world
found some poor foreigner's baby thrown into her lap as the boat was
lowered.

By this time the women and children had all been mustered on the second
or A deck; the men were supposed to remain up on the boat deck while the
boats were being lowered to the level of the women, where sections of
the rail had been cleared away for them to embark more easily; but this
rule, like all the other rules, was not rigidly observed. The crew was
not trained enough to discipline and coerce the passengers. How could
they be? They were trained to serve them, to be obsequious and obliging;
it would have been too much to expect that they should suddenly take
command and order them about.

There were many minor adventures and even accidents. One woman had both
her legs broken in getting into the boat. The mere business of being
lowered in a boat through seventy feet of darkness was in itself
productive of more than one exciting incident. The falls of the first
boat jammed when she was four feet from the water, and she had to be
dropped into it with a splash. And there was one very curious incident
which happened to the boat in which Mr. Beezley, the English
schoolmaster already referred to, had been allotted a place as a helper.
"As the boat began to descend," he said, "two ladies were pushed
hurriedly through the crowd on B deck, and a baby ten months old was
passed down after them. Then down we went, the crew shouting out
directions to those lowering us. 'Level,' 'Aft,' 'Stern,' 'Both
together!' until we were some ten feet from the water. Here occurred the
only anxious moment we had during the whole of our experience from the
time of our leaving the deck to our reaching the _Carpathia_.