So the struggle for supremacy began, the young and the strong jostling the old and weak, fighting for place and supremacy. Ah, Heaven, that such cruelty and selfishness should exist beneath the sky!
The few brave, chivalrous souls, the captain and first mate among them, who insisted that the women and children should be given first place and the men take their chances, had their voices drowned by angry, clamorous cries, as the traitors scrambled down the ladder pell-mell into the boats, crowding them till they almost sank with their heavy freight.
In the awful glare of light that illuminated the sea and sky and the scene of terror, Leon Lyndon leaned against the deck rail with his arm about his daughter, pleading, praying the selfish wretches to take her in and save her, though he must himself perish.
In the lurid scene of smoke and flame Jessie’s face shone clear and pale as a lily, as she clasped his neck, entreating him not to let her be separated from him.
“Oh, papa, darling, there is no one to love poor Jessie but you! Think how lonely I should be in the wide world without you, my only friend! If both cannot be saved, let us die together!”
The man’s face, white already with the anguish of despair, grew more pallid still in the lurid light that glared on it as though her pathetic plaint went through his heart.
Clasping her close as though in a last embrace, he cried passionately:
“Oh, my darling, it is a cruel pass to which we are brought, but, as for me, I am growing old, and it does not much matter. My life has been a failure, and there are times when I have been tempted to end it with my own hands. But since I found you, Jessie, you have made it sweeter, so that I would fain live for you! But it cannot be. Even if I can persuade those selfish men to give you a place in the lifeboat, I must be left behind. In a moment we part forever! Listen, Jessie, my sweet daughter, to the last words of a dying man!”
She clasped her fair arms about his neck, and raised her lovely face, tear-wet and pain-drawn, to his own.
“Papa, darling, we cannot part. Do not send me from you!”