"Then came the usual panic.
"Cone tried to stop it, tried to stem the tide of passengers. His officers were good, but Redding was hit on the head by a block from the maingaff vang and while Cone was trusting to him to take charge aft, he set to work forward to get the boats out in ship-shape and seamanlike order. His second was a new man—Billings—a blue-nose he knew nothing about, but a good enough fellow to take charge. He and the third officer stood the crowd back for a time and got the port boats over.
"You see, it was smooth and there wouldn't have been much trouble, but the passengers had a grouch against Cone, hated him. The women thought him a brute and the men had heard so much from them about his private life, his affairs, his general rascality, they wouldn't stand it any longer. They rushed it and two were shot, one fell overboard and another was badly hurt. These were the only casualties—strange, wasn't it? Only passengers hurt were those who were trying to save themselves from the brutal and overbearing Cone.
"The Champion settled quickly by the head, her nose getting well down. This had the evil tendency of lifting her stern so high that the boats couldn't be handled easily. It stopped the flow of the sea to a certain extent, but it was too late to do anything to help that now. The fireroom force came up, they were literally drowned out, forced to quit, and the engineers came forward and told of the useless steam—not enough to run the pumps. Then Cone knew it was get away while he could.
"Cone stood on the port side of the flying bridge, stood there and roared out his orders, wondering why Redding didn't respond to the work cut out aft. He saw no boats going over where Redding should be tending to them, and when the crowd finally surged forward he had to let them come, had to let them get into the boats there. Oh, yes, he was charged with not holding them back, not being able to command his ship, but man, he had to let them come forward, it was only the fighting ones who insisted in getting first places and taking charge that got hurt.
"The Potomack lay to and sent in her boats, sent in four big whaleboats and one dinghy. The water wasn't rough—any good boat would live a long time—and Cone let them take off his passengers as fast as they could. He was well scored for it afterward; they told how he couldn't do it himself, and if it hadn't been for the Potomack he would have lost all his passengers.
"When the Champion settled Cone was still standing there on the bridge, standing there and he knew what it meant to him.
"'You'd better go along, sir,' said Billings, 'we're going in the next boat.'
"But Cone just looked at him for a minute, just stood there watching things and saw the last passenger get away.
"'You hound,' the fellow yelled, 'you cowardly rascal—you insulter of women!'