then the fog shuts down on all, like the curtain
on the last act of a tragedy. Even if the great steamship were stopped at
once, her momentum would carry her a mile beyond the spot before a boat
could be lowered, and then it would be almost impossible to find the
floating wreckage in the fog. So, usually, the steamships press on with
unchecked speed, their officers perhaps breathing a sigh of pity for the
victims, but reflecting that it is a sailor's peril to which those on the
biggest and staunchest of ships are exposed almost equally with the
fishermen. For was it not on the Banks and in a fog that the blow was
struck which sent "La Bourgogne" to the bottom with more than four hundred
souls?

[Illustration: STRIKES A SCHOONER AND SHEARS THROUGH HER LIKE A KNIFE]

Ordinarily there is but short shrift for the helpless folks on a fishing
vessel when struck by a liner. The keen prow cuts right through planking
and stout oak frame, and the dissevered portions of the hull are tossed to
starboard and to port, to sink before the white foam has faded from the
wake of the destroying monster. They tell ghoulish tales of bodies sliced
in twain as neatly as the boat itself; of men asleep in their bunks being
decapitated, or waking, to find themselves struggling in the water with an
arm or leg shorn off. And again, there are stories of escapes that were
almost miraculous; of men thrown by the shock of collision out of the
foretop of the schooner onto the deck of the steamship, and carried abroad
in safety, while their partners mourned them as dead; of men, dozing in
their bunks, startled suddenly by the grinding crash of steel and timbers,
and left gazing wide-eyed at the gray sea lapping the side of their
berths, where an instant before the tough oak skin of the schooner had
been; of men stunned by some flying bit of wood, who, all unconscious,
floated on the top of the hungry waves, until as by Divine direction,
their inert bodies touched the side of a vagrant dory and were dragged
aboard to life again. The Banks can perform their miracles of humanity as
well as of cruelty.

Few forms of manual work are more exacting, involve more physical
suffering and actual peril to life, than fishing with trawls. Under the
happiest circumstances, with the sky clear, the sea moderately calm, and
the air warm, it is arduous, muscle-trying, nerve-racking work. Pulling up
half a mile of line, with hooks catching on the bottom, big fish
flounder