e. As I got to
the side of the vessel, I saw a steamer alongside, and felt the boat I
was in careening over. A neighbour, in fear and desperation, caught hold
of me as a drowning man catches at a straw; no time for compliments
this, when it is neck or nothing; so, by a right-hander in the pit of
the stomach, I got quit of his clutch, and, throwing my desk over to the
other boat, I grasped the wooden fender and slid down. Thank God, I was
safe!--my companion was already safe also.

It was about half-past four A.M., a drizzly, wet morning, quite dark,
except the flame of the torches. A plank was got on board of the sinking
boat, along which more passengers and even some luggage were saved. The
crew of the sound boat had hard work to keep people from trying to
return and save their luggage, thus risking not only their own lives but
at the same time impeding the escape of others. From the gallery above
I was looking down upon the wreck, lit up by the lurid light of some
dozen torches, when, with a crash like thunder, she went clean over and
broke into a thousand pieces; eighty head of cattle, fastened by the
horns, vainly struggled to escape a watery grave. It was indeed a
terrific and awful scene to witness. From the first striking till she
went to pieces, not a quarter of an hour had elapsed; but who was saved?
Who knew, and--alas! that I must add--who cared?

The crew worked hard enough to rescue all, and to them be every credit
for their exertions; but the indifference exhibited by those who had
been snatched from the jaws of death was absolutely appalling. The
moment they escaped, they found their way to the bar and the stove, and
there they were smoking, drinking, and passing the ribald jest, even
before the wreck had gone to pieces, or the fate of one-half of their
companions been ascertained. Yet there was a scene before their eyes
sufficient, one would have imagined, to have softened the hardest heart
and made the most thoughtless think. There, among them, at the very
stove round which they were gathered, stood one with a haggard eye and
vacant gaze, and at his feet clung two half-naked infants; a quarter of
an hour before he was a hale man, a husband, with five children; now, he
was an idiot and a widower, with two. No tear dimmed his eye, no trace
of grief was to be read in his countenance; though the two pledges of
the love of one now no more hung helplessly round his legs, he heeded
them not; they sought a fat