sufficient capacity to save the crew and passengers.

But the danger was imminent--a moment's delay might be fatal to all
on board the wreck; not an instant was to be lost.

The order was quickly given:

"Get out the lifeboats!"

And the sailors sprang to obey.

At this moment another fatality threatened the doomed crew--it was
what might have been expected: the steerage passengers, mostly a low
and brutalized order of men, in whom the mere animal instinct of
love of life and fear of death was predominant over every nobler
emotion, came rushing in a body up the deck, and crying with one
voice:

"To the lifeboats! to the lifeboats! Let us seize the lifeboats, and
save ourselves!"

Everyone else was panic-stricken. It is in crises like this that the
true hero is developed. With the bound of a young Achilles Ishmael
seized a heavy iron bar and sprang to the starboard gangway, where
the two remaining boats were still suspended; and standing at bay,
with limbs apart, and eyes threatening, and his fearful weapon
raised in his right hand, he thundered forth:

"Who tries to pass here dies that instant! Stand off!"