e engineer, all the five sailors, and two of the passengers
were clothed. The rest of the passengers were little better than naked.
Here and there a man had snatched a blanket from his berth, and one or
two of them were wearing their trousers, but the rest were clothed for
the most part only with their shirts and drawers. There were eighteen
women and five little girls in the boat. The little girls were well
looked after. Two were wrapped in Vandover's travelling-rug and a couple
of men had put their coats around the third. But there were not wraps
enough to go around among the women, by far the larger part of them were
covered only by their night-dresses or their bed-gowns.

It was abominably cold; the rain fell continually, and the wind blew in
long gusts, piercing, cutting. Every plunge of the boat threw icy
bullets of spray into the air, which the wind caught up and flung down
broad upon the boat. Sometimes even a huge wave would break just upon
their quarter, and then great torrents of bitter, freezing water would
fall over them in a deluge, leaving a sediment of salt that cracked the
skin. The women were huddled upon the bottom of the boat near the waist,
where they had been placed for greater safety. They were fouled with
the muddy water that gathered there, their long hair dishevelled,
dripping with sleet, clinging to their wet cheeks and throats, their
bodies showing pink with cold, through their thin, soaked coverings,
their limbs racked with long incessant shudderings, a wretched group,
miserable beyond words. One of them close by Vandover's feet, he noticed
particularly, had but a single garment to cover her. She was drenched
through and through, her bare feet were blue with the cold, her head was
thrown back, her eyes closed. She was silent except when an unusual gust
of wind whipped the rain and spray across her body like the long, fine
lash of a whip. Then with every breath she moaned, drawing in her breath
between her teeth with a little whistling gasp, too weak, too exhausted,
too nearly unconscious to attempt to shield herself in any way.

Vandover could do nothing; he had almost stripped himself to help clothe
the others. Nothing more could be done. The suffering had to go on, and
he began to wonder how human beings could endure such stress and yet
live.

But Vandover himself suffered too keenly to take much thought for the
sufferings of the others, while besides that anguish which he shared
with th