"Do you mean for me to go too?" he asked, in his usual dull manner.
"You might as well," the officer answered brusquely.
The great vessel had lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor, reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic efforts seem all but hopeless, and walking, even standing, was quite out of the question. Tom could feel the ship heeling over beneath him.
Even the cheerily authoritative voice of the megaphone up on the bridge had now ceased, and there was no reassuring reminder of life there—nothing but the black outline of the trestled structure, slanting at a dreadful angle with the water pouring from it.
Tom and his distracted companions were evidently the last on board.
The rail was now so low that the plunge of the hatch would not be very hazardous at all events, for the seething waters beat over the deck now and again, rolling up as on a beach at the seashore and adding their ominous chill to Tom's already chilled body.
Out of the turmoil of the sea sounds rose, some the even tones of command, sounding strangely out of place in the storm; others which he recognized with a shudder as the last frightful gasps of drowning persons.
In a minute—two minutes—he would be plunged into that seething brine where he still might hear but could not see. Instinctively he increased his exertions with this makeshift raft which, if they could but cling to it till the sea subsided, might bear them up until succor came.
As soon as the hatch was raised, it began to slide away, and those who had lifted it jumped upon it, clinging as best they could.
From somewhere out of the darkness a man came rushing pell-mell for this precarious refuge. As he jumped upon it, clutching frantically at the moulding around its edge, Tom stepped off.