did know, and instantly, why those in the water were so desirous of
getting back on the steamer. The water was cold--so cold that it
was painful. The pang, as I plunged into it, was as quick and
sharp as that of fire. It bit to the marrow. It was like the grip
of death. I gasped with the anguish and shock of it, filling my
lungs before the life-preserver popped me to the surface. The
taste of the salt was strong in my mouth, and I was strangling with
the acrid stuff in my throat and lungs.

But it was the cold that was most distressing. I felt that I could
survive but a few minutes. People were struggling and floundering
in the water about me. I could hear them crying out to one
another. And I heard, also, the sound of oars. Evidently the
strange steamboat had lowered its boats. As the time went by I
marvelled that I was still alive. I had no sensation whatever in
my lower limbs, while a chilling numbness was wrapping about my
heart and creeping into it. Small waves, with spiteful foaming
crests, continually broke over me and into my mouth, sending me off
into more strangling paroxysms.

The noises grew indistinct, though I heard a final and despairing
chorus of screams in the distance, and knew that the Martinez had
gone down. Later,--how much later I have no knowledge,--I came to
myself with a start of fear. I was alone. I could hear no calls
or cries--only the sound of the waves, made weirdly hollow and
reverberant by the fog. A panic in a crowd, which partakes of a
sort of community of interest, is not so terrible as a panic when
one is by oneself; and such a panic I now suffered. Whither was I
drifting? The red-faced man had said that the tide was ebbing
through the Golden Gate. Was I, then, being carried out to sea?