“No danger of that,” was Gunseyt’s reassurance. “This boat is well piloted and supplied with searchlights. One experience like that is enough to insure the greatest caution in vessels like this for a hundred years.”
Guy and his mother retired early that night. Both were tired, as they had been up late every night of the voyage thus far. Moreover, life on an ocean liner had lost some of its novelty for them, and they were disposed by this time to look upon the experience almost in a matter-of-fact manner. And matter-of-fact people usually go to bed at reasonable hours.
Guy awoke shortly before midnight. The time he learned later, as there was reason for its being registered in the minds of others. The awakening was not an ordinary one, for it came with a jar that shook him heavily, though not with great violence. For a minute or two he lay awake, wondering what it could mean. He was sure he had not been dreaming. He had no recollection of a dream.
But he was still sleepy and ceased to wonder as he drifted back into unconsciousness. How long afterward he was aroused again, he could not tell, but this time his awakening was decidedly more startling.
Some one was pounding heavily at the door. Guy listened a few moments with thrills of dread at the words that came with the knocking, and then fairly leaped out of his bunk.
“Get up and get out o’ there as quick as you can! The ship’s sinking!” was the fearful warning that came loudly through the panel of the stateroom door.
CHAPTER XII
The Wreck
Mrs. Burton, also awakened by the alarm, was out of bed almost as soon as her son. The latter threw open the door between their rooms and called out to his mother, who replied that she was dressing. Hurriedly the boy drew on a few articles of clothing, and then turned to the electric button to “push” on the light. The button “pushed” all right, but the room remained dark.
“Put on the light, Guy,” said Mrs. Burton in strange, hollow tones. Evidently she was laboring under a dreadful emotion.
Guy tried again. He pushed the “off” button and the “on” again, but without success.