of timber. I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before I could
scramble to my feet I heard the scream of the women. This it was,
I am certain,--the most indescribable of blood-curdling sounds,--
that threw me into a panic. I remembered the life-preservers
stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by
a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few
minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of
pulling down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the
red-faced man fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group
of women. This memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any
picture I have seen. It is a picture, and I can see it now,--the
jagged edges of the hole in the side of the cabin, through which
the grey fog swirled and eddied; the empty upholstered seats,
littered with all the evidences of sudden flight, such as packages,
hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps; the stout gentleman who had
been reading my essay, encased in cork and canvas, the magazine
still in his hand, and asking me with monotonous insistence if I
thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly
around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all
corners; and finally, the screaming bedlam of women.

This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves.
It must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced man, for I
have another picture which will never fade from my mind. The stout
gentleman is stuffing the magazine into his overcoat pocket and
looking on curiously. A tangled mass of women, with drawn, white
faces and open mouths, is shrieking like a chorus of lost souls;
and the red-faced man, his face now purplish with wrath, and with
arms extended overhead as in the act of hurling thunderbolts, is
shouting, "Shut up! Oh, shut up!"