d from this side. What are they after? What
is there for them to find out? We know what had happened. The ship
scraped her side against a piece of ice, and sank after floating for two
hours and a half, taking a lot of people down with her. What more can
they find out from the unfair badgering of the unhappy "Yamsi," or the
ruffianly abuse of the same.

"Yamsi," I should explain, is a mere code address, and I use it here
symbolically. I have seen commerce pretty close. I know what it is
worth, and I have no particular regard for commercial magnates, but one
must protest against these Bumble-like proceedings. Is it indignation at
the loss of so many lives which is at work here? Well, the American
railroads kill very many people during one single year, I dare say. Then
why don't these dignitaries come down on the presidents of their own
railroads, of which one can't say whether they are mere means of
transportation or a sort of gambling game for the use of American
plutocrats. Is it only an ardent and, upon the whole, praiseworthy
desire for information? But the reports of the inquiry tell us that the
august senators, though raising a lot of questions testifying to the
complete innocence and even blankness of their minds, are unable to
understand what the second officer is saying to them. We are so informed
by the press from the other side. Even such a simple expression as that
one of the look-out men was stationed in the "eyes of the ship" was too
much for the senators of the land of graphic expression. What it must
have been in the more recondite matters I won't even try to think,
because I have no mind for smiles just now. They were greatly exercised
about the sound of explosions heard when half the ship was under water
already. Was there one? Were there two? They seemed to be smelling a
rat there! Has not some charitable soul told them (what even schoolboys
who read sea stories know) that when a ship sinks from a leak like this,
a deck or two is always blown up; and that when a steamship goes down by
the head, the boilers may, and often do break adrift with a sound which
resembles the sound of an explosion? And they may, indeed, explode, for
all I know. In the only case I have seen of a steamship sinking there
was such a sound, but I didn't dive down after her to investigate. She
was not of 45,000 tons and declared unsinkable, but the sight was
impressive enough. I shall never forget the muffled,