slowly up and down, now giving an order to the wheel--you see, he had
to direct the Dixie's course through all the shipping--now watching
the passengers swarming over our bow and along our deck, now looking
ahead to see his way through the ships at anchor. Sometimes he did
glance at the poor, drowning ones, but he was not concerned with
them.

"Of course, there were numbers drowned, but by keeping his hands in
his pockets and his head cool he saved hundreds of lives. Not until
the last person was off the steamboat--he sent men aboard to make
sure--did he take off the press of sail. And the steamboat sank at
once."

She ceased, and looked at me with shining eyes for approbation.

"It was splendid," I acknowledged. "I admire the quiet man of power,
though I confess that such quietness under stress seems to me almost
unearthly and beyond human. I can't conceive of myself acting that
way, and I am confident that I was suffering more while that poor
devil was in the water than all the rest of the onlookers put
together."

"Father suffers!" she defended loyally. "Only he does not show it."

I bowed, for I felt she had missed my point.



CHAPTER V