pes of learning something more of the catastrophe from the people whom
he had already found gathered there.

A large part of the passengers were still there, seated or standing about
in earnest colloquy. They were in that mood which follows great
excitement, and in which the feeblest-minded are sure to lead the talk.
At such times one feels that a sensible frame of mind is unsympathetic,
and if expressed, unpopular, or perhaps not quite safe; and Basil, warned
by his fate with the ladies, listened gravely to the voice of the common
imbecility and incoherence.

The principal speaker was a tall person, wearing a silk travelling-cap.
He had a face of stupid benignity and a self-satisfied smirk; and he was
formally trying to put at his ease, and hopelessly confusing the loutish
youth before him. "You say you saw the whole accident, and you're
probably the only passenger that did see it. You'll be the most important
witness at the trial," he added, as if there would ever be any trial
about it. "Now, how did the tow-boat hit us?"

"Well, she came bows on."

"Ah! bows on," repeated the other, with great satisfaction; and a little
murmur of "Bows on!" ran round the listening circle.

"That is," added the witness, "it seemed as if we struck her amidships,
and cut her in two, and sunk her."

"Just so," continued the examiner, accepting the explanation, "bows on.
Now I want to ask if you saw our captain or any of the crew about?"

"Not a soul," said the witness, with the solemnity of a man already on
oath.

"That'll do," exclaimed the other. "This gentleman's experience coincides
exactly with my own. I didn't see the collision, but I did see the cloud
of steam from the sinking boat, and I saw her go down. There wasn't an
officer to be found anywhere on board our boat. I looked about for the
captain and the mate myself, and couldn't find either of them high or
low."

"The officers ought all to have been sitting here on the promenade deck,"
suggested one ironical spirit in the crowd, but no one noticed him.

The gentleman in the silk travelling-cap now took a chair, and a number
of sympathetic listeners drew their chairs about him, and then began an
interchange of experience, in which each related to the last particular
all that he felt, thought, and said, and, if married, what his wife felt,
thought, and said, at the moment of the calamity. They turned the
disaster over and over in their talk, and rolled it under their t