"Choke dot idiot performance. Let the vimmen do the prayin'. Tumble into dot boat, you. You vill make the devil to pay here, I tells you. Be still!"
Fear had made the wretch deaf to reason. He subsided only to stagger to another corner of the deck, where his prayers again drew after him many who were convinced that death was inevitable.
"Jam him into the boat, and set on him," was the captain's order. "Break him in two pieces mit an oar if he makes one more yell."
Twenty minutes after the collision, the saloon deck of the Wasdale was only a few feet from the sea. The cheering creak of the falls as they ripped through the sheaves was sounding from one end of the deck to the other, as the boats descended while the captain counted them and held his breath, lest some unlooked-for lurch of the helpless ship should crush them against her sides like so many egg-shells. Were all hands out? He did not know, but it was time to leave. Some one jogged his elbow, and he turned to see little "Moses-Josephs," who said with trembling lip:
"I'm all ready to go when you are, sir. Anything more I can do? I took care of the stewardess and her cat, sir."
"Joost run to my room quick, and get the pocket-book in the top— No, stay here mit me. Yump into Number T'ree boat this minute, you liddle nuisance."
"I cannot let him go," groaned the captain, "and risk the child be drownded. Vat his sick mudder say to me if he don't come back?"
Surely there was time for the captain to rush up to his room, only half the length of the deck, and rescue the savings of his long life at sea. The wistful, troubled face of the wife as he had last seen her, the hope of home and health, fairly drove him to run forward with head down. He looked overside as he ran, and the gray sea was lipping so close that he could have touched it from the deck below. The planks under his feet rolled once with a weary, sluggish heave. He had once been in a sailing vessel which foundered in such a smooth sea as this, and he recalled that just before she plunged under there had been a series of these long labored rolls as if the ship were gasping for breath before the sea should wholly smother her.
He had almost gained the ladder to the bridge when he saw a moving blotch of white almost hidden behind the bow of a disabled boat. Swerving, he found a woman, a little girl, and a man, plainly their husband and father. The man was leaning over the rail, trying to call to the nearest boat, which was warily pushing away from the sinking ship. Spasms of fear so clutched his throat that his cries were only whispers, as one shrieks without voice amid nightmare perils. The woman clung to his coat, the little girl to her mother's garment. Evidently they had been overlooked because of the hiding place to which the man had blindly led them. As the captain reached the rail, the man tore himself loose from his wife and child with a great cry, and plunged headlong overside, not into the sea, but into the boat, which, at great risk, had been pulled close to save the group. With a crash, he smote the metal gunwale and fell inboard.
"Did you caught that dirty loafer?" shouted the captain.