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!"
Before this young hero the, crowd of senseless, rushing brutes recoiled as from a fire.
He pursued and secured his victory with a few words: