all the crying of the passengers below, that there was a pause. "Are you
ready, Rames?"--"Ay, ay, sir!"--"Then light up, for God's sake!" In a
moment he and another were burning blue-lights, and the ship and all on
board seemed to be enclosed in a mist of light, under a great black dome.

The light shone up so high that I could see the huge Iceberg upon which
we had struck, cloven at the top and down the middle, exactly like
Penrith Church in my dream. At the same moment I could see the watch
last relieved, crowding up and down on deck; I could see Mrs. Atherfield
and Miss Coleshaw thrown about on the top of the companion as they
struggled to bring the child up from below; I could see that the masts
were going with the shock and the beating of the ship; I could see the
frightful breach stove in on the starboard side, half the length of the
vessel, and the sheathing and timbers spirting up; I could see that the
Cutter was disabled, in a wreck of broken fragments; and I could see
every eye turned upon me. It is my belief that if there had been ten
thousand eyes there, I should have seen them all, with their different
looks. And all this in a moment. But you must consider what a moment.

I saw the men, as they looked at me, fall towards their appointed
stations, like good men and true. If she had not righted, they could
have done very little there or anywhere but die--not that it is little
for a man to die at his post--I mean they could have done nothing to save
the passengers and themselves. Happily, however, the violence of the
shock with which we had so determinedly borne down direct on that fatal
Iceberg, as if it had been our destination instead of our destruction,
had so smashed and pounded the ship that she got off in this same instant
and righted. I did not want the carpenter to tell me she was filling and
going down; I could see and hear that. I gave Rames the word to lower
the Long-boat and the Surf-boat, and I myself told off the men for each