every hundred yards that she goes, and you look over the side and see
only the black water in the gathering night.

Safe! I'm not sure now that I come to think of it that it isn't worse
than sinking in the Atlantic. After all, in the Atlantic there is
wireless telegraphy, and a lot of trained sailors and stewards. But
out on Lake Wissanotti,--far out, so that you can only just see the
lights of the town away off to the south,--when the propeller comes
to a stop,--and you can hear the hiss of steam as they start to rake
out the engine fires to prevent an explosion,--and when you turn from
the red glare that comes from the furnace doors as they open them, to
the black dark that is gathering over the lake,--and there's a night
wind beginning to run among the rushes,--and you see the men going
forward to the roof of the pilot house to send up the rockets to
rouse the town, safe? Safe yourself, if you like; as for me, let me
once get back into Mariposa again, under the night shadow of the
maple trees, and this shall be the last, last time I'll go on Lake
Wissanotti.

Safe! Oh yes! Isn't it strange how safe other people's adventures
seem after they happen? But you'd have been scared, too, if you'd
been there just before the steamer sank, and seen them bringing up
all the women on to the top deck.

I don't see how some of the people took it so calmly; how Mr. Smith,
for instance, could have gone on smoking and telling how he'd had a
steamer "sink on him" on Lake Nipissing and a still bigger one, a
side-wheeler, sink on him in Lake Abbitibbi.

Then, quite suddenly, with a quiver, down she went. You could feel