g terraces of
glowing port holes and deck lights towered above us. The ship was slowly
turning over.

We were directly opposite the engine room section of the _Laconia_.
There was a tangle of oars, spars and rigging on the seats in our boat,
and considerable confusion resulted before we could manage to place in
operation some of the big oars on either side.

The jibbering, bullet-headed negro was pulling a sweep directly behind
me and I turned to quiet him as his frantic reaches with the oar were
jabbing me in the back.

In the dull light from the upper decks, I looked into his slanting
face--his eyes all whites and his lips moving convulsively. He shivered
with fright, but in addition to that he was freezing in the thin cotton
shirt that composed his entire upper covering. He worked feverishly at
the oar to warm himself.

"Get away from her. My Gawd, get away from her," he kept repeating.
"When the water hits her hot boilers she'll blow up the whole ocean and
there's just tons and tons of shrapnel in her hold."

His excitement spread to other members of the crew in our boat. The
ship's baker, designated by his pantry headgear of white linen, became a
competing alarmist and a white fireman, whose blasphemy was nothing
short of profound, added to the confusion by cursing every one.

It was the tension of the minute--it was the give way of overwrought
nerves--it was bedlam and nightmare.

I sought to establish some authority in our boat which was about to
break out into full mutiny. I made my way to the stern. There, huddled
up in a great overcoat and almost muffled in a ship's life-preserver, I
came upon an old white-haired man and I remembered him.

He was a sea-captain of the old sailing days. He had been a second cabin
passenger with whom I had talked before. Earlier in the year he had
sailed out of Nova Scotia with a cargo of codfish. His schooner, the
_Secret_, had broken in two in mid-ocean, but he and his crew had been
picked up by a tramp and taken back to New York.

From there he had sailed on another ship bound for Europe, but this
ship, a Holland-American Liner, the _Ryndam_, had never reached the
other side. In mid-Atlantic her captain had lost courage over the U-boat
threats. He had turned the ship about and returned to America. Thus, the
_Laconia_ represented the third unsuccessful attempt of this grey-haired
mariner to get back to his home in England. His name was Captain Dear.

"Our boat's rud