Then he hurried out through the saloon on to the
afterdeck. The place was crowded, and the confusion was indescribable.
Fenton's first impulse was to put his hands over his ears, to shut out
the horrible din. The officers were shouting orders and getting the
boats manned, for even in this short time the steamer was settling. The
hissing swash of the waves beating into the breach, the prayers, the
imprecations, the hysterical sobs, the agonized cries of the struggling
passengers, the darkness, the terror, the yawning abyss of death
beneath them,--combined to sweep away all human feelings save the
instinct of self-preservation. The brute side of human nature revealed
itself with a hideousness more horrible than the terror of the night
and the sea. Unprotected women were crushed and trampled, and as the
boats were lowered a fierce hand-to-hand conflict ensued, men fighting
like wild cats to force their way into them. The officers beat them
back, and made way for the women as well as they could, struggling at
the same time with the difficult task of maintaining discipline among
the crew.
Shrill amid the uproar, a child's cry smote Fenton's ear as he came out
upon the deck. Directly before him a man was trying to pull a life-
preserver off from a boy, while a woman fought with him in a desperate
endeavor to shield her child. The lad was about the size of Caldwell
and in the confused light not wholly unlike him.
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