I slept near the engine-room, on the table on which the dishes were washed up, and the explosion and shaking awoke me. It was quiet on deck. The engine uttered a hot, steamy whisper; a hammer sounded repeatedly. But in the course of a few minutes all the saloon passengers howled, roared with one voice, and suddenly a distressing scene was in progress.
In a white fog which swiftly rarefied, women with their hair loose, disheveled men with round eyes like fishes' eyes, rushed about, trampling one another, carrying bundles, bags, boxes, stumbling, falling, calling upon God and St. Nicholas, striking one another. It was very terrible, but at the same time it was interesting. I ran after them to see what they would do next.
This was my first experience of a night alarm, yet I understood at once that the passengers had made a mistake. The boat had not slowed down. On the right hand, quite near, gleamed the life-belts. The night was light, the full moon stood high. But the passengers rushed wildly about the deck, and now those traveling in the other classes had come up, too. Some one jumped overboard. He was followed by another, and yet a third. Two peasants and a monk with heavy pieces of wood broke off a bench which was screwed to the desk. A large cage of fowls was thrown into the water from the stern. In the center of the deck, near the steps leading to the captain's bridge, knelt a peasant who prostrated himself before the people as they rushed past him, and howled like a wolf:
"I am Orthodox and a sinner—"
"To the boats, you devils!" cried a fat gentleman who wore only trousers and no shirt, and he beat his breast with his fist.
The sailors came running, seized people by the collars, knocked their heads together, and threw them on the deck. Smouri approached heavily, wearing his overcoat over his night-clothes, addressed them all in a resounding voice:
"Yes, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. What are you making all this fuss for? Has the steamer stopped, eh? Are we going slower? There is the shore. Those fools who jumped into the water have caught the life-belts, they have had to drag them out. There they are. Do you see? Two boats—"
He struck the third-class passengers on the head with his fist, and they sank like sacks to the deck.
The confusion was not yet hushed when a lady in a cloak flew to Smouri with a tablespoon in her hand, and, flourishing it in his face, cried:
"How dare you?"