nspeakable horror of it.

Meanwhile the ship was rapidly sinking; she had taken so strong a list
to starboard that it was only with the utmost difficulty I could retain
my footing upon her steeply inclined deck, while she was so much down by
the stern that the sea was almost level with the deck right aft.
Scarcely knowing what I did, acting with the inconsequence of one in a
dream, I clawed my way across the bridge that led from the upper deck to
the poop, and reached the taffrail, where I stood gazing blankly down
into the black water, thinking, I am afraid, some rather rebellious
thoughts. I must have stood thus for at least five minutes before I
realised that my hands were gripping a life-buoy, one of six that were
stopped to the rail. Still acting mechanically, and with no very
definite purpose, I drew forth my pocket-knife, severed the lashing,
passed the buoy over my head and shoulders, thrust my arms through it,
climbed the rail--and dropped into the water.

The chill of the immersion instantly brought me to my senses. In a
moment I realised that if I would save my life I must, without an
instant's delay, put the greatest possible distance between the ship and
myself before she foundered, otherwise when she sank--which she might do
at any moment--she would drag me down with her, and drown me. The
desire to live, which seemed to have been paralysed within me by the
suddenness of the disaster and the dreadful scenes I had subsequently
witnessed, re-awoke, and I struck out vigorously.

I know not how long I had been swimming--it seemed to me, in my anxiety
to get well away from the ship, to have been but a very few minutes--
when the tumultuous sounds of contention aboard the doomed _Saturn_
suddenly changed to a long wailing scream, and, glancing back over my
shoulder, I saw, upreared against the star-lit sky, the fore end of the
ship standing almost vertically out of the water, while at the same
instant another loud _boom_ reached my ears, proclaiming either the
bursting of the ship's boilers, the yielding of another bulkhead, or,
possibly, the blowing up of her decks; then, as I paused for a moment to
watch the conclusion of the catastrophe, the hull sank lower and lower
still in the water until within the space of a minute it completely
vanished.

The dreadful sight stimulated me to superhuman exertion, for I believed
I was still perilously near that great sinking mass; and indeed I had
scarcely covered