the boat sink, sink,--down, down,--would it never get to the bottom?
The water came flush up to the lower deck, and then,--thank
heaven,--the sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe
and tight on a reed bank.

Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway,
if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh.
Danger! pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea. Why, it is
just the little things like this that give zest to a day on the
water.

Within half a minute they were all running round looking for
sandwiches and cracking jokes and talking of making coffee over the
remains of the engine fires.


I don't need to tell at length how it all happened after that.

I suppose the people on the Mariposa Belle would have had to settle
down there all night or till help came from the town, but some of the
men who had gone forward and were peering out into the dark said that
it couldn't be more than a mile across the water to Miller's Point.
You could almost see it over there to the left,--some of them, I
think, said "off on the port bow," because you know when you get
mixed up in these marine disasters, you soon catch the atmosphere of
the thing.

So pretty soon they had the davits swung out over the side and were
lowering the old lifeboat from the top deck into the water.