he ship's side.

The list of the ship increased. On the port side, we looked down the
slanting side of the ship and noticed that her water line on that side
was a number of feet above the waves. The slant was so pronounced that
the life-boats, instead of swinging clear from the davits, rested
against the side of the ship. From my position in the life-boat I could
see that we were going to have difficulty in the descent to the water.

"Lower away," some one gave the order and we started downward with a
jerk toward the seemingly hungry, rising and falling swells. Then we
stopped with another jerk and remained suspended in mid-air while the
men at the bow and the stern swore and tusseled with the ropes.

The stern of the boat was down; the bow up, leaving us at an angle of
about forty-five degrees. We clung to the seats to save ourselves from
falling out.

"Who's got a knife? A knife! A knife!" shouted a fireman in the bow. He
was bare to the waist and perspiration stood out in drops on his face
and chest and made streaks through the coal dust with which his skin was
grimed.

"Great Gawd! Give him a knife," bawled a half-dressed jibbering negro
stoker who wrung his hands in the stern.

A hatchet was thrust into my hands and I forwarded it to the bow. There
was a flash of sparks as it was brought down with a clang on the holding
pulley. One strand of the rope parted.

Down plunged the bow of the boat too quickly for the men in the stern.
We came to a jerky stop, this time with the stern in the air and the bow
down, the dangerous angle reversed.

One man in the stern let the rope race through his blistered fingers.
With hands burnt to the quick, he grabbed the rope and stopped the
precipitous descent just in time to bring the stern level with the bow.

Then bow and stern tried to lower away together. The slant of the ship's
side had increased, so that our boat instead of sliding down it like a
toboggan was held up on one side when the taffrail caught on one of the
condenser exhaust pipes projecting slightly from the ship's side.

Thus the starboard side of the life-boat stuck fast and high while the
port side dropped down and once more we found ourselves clinging on at a
new angle and looking straight down into the water.

A hand slipped into mine and a voice sounded huskily close to my ear. It
was the little old Jewish travelling man who was disliked in the smoke
room because he used to speak too certainly of th