gan an
interchange of experience, in which each related to the last particular
all that he felt, thought, and said, and, if married, what his wife
felt, thought, and said, at the moment of the calamity. They turned the
disaster over and over in their talk, and rolled it under their tongues.
Then they reverted to former accidents in which they had been concerned;
and the silk-capped gentleman told, to the common admiration, of a
fearful escape of his, on the Erie Road, from being thrown down a steep
embankment fifty feet high by a piece of rock that had fallen on the
track. "Now just see, gentlemen, what a little thing, humanly speaking,
life depends upon. If that old woman had been able to sleep, and hadn't
sent that boy down to warn the train, we should have run into the rock
and been dashed to pieces. The passengers made up a purse for the boy,
and I wrote a full account of it to the papers."

"Well," said one of the group, a man in a hard hat, "I never lie down
on a steamboat or a railroad train. I want to be ready for whatever
happens."

The others looked at this speaker with interest, as one who had invented
a safe method of travel.

"I happened to be up to-night, but I almost always undress and go to
bed, just as if I were in my own house," said the gentleman of the silk
cap.

"I don't say your way isn't the best, but that's my way."

The champions of the rival systems debated their merits with suavity and
mutual respect, but they met with scornful silence a compromising spirit
who held that it was better to throw off your coat and boots, but keep
your pantaloons on. Meanwhile, the steamer was hanging idle upon the
current, against which it now and then stirred a careless wheel, still
waiting for the return of the small boats. Thin gray clouds, through
rifts of which a star sparkled keenly here and there, veiled the
heavens; shadowy bluffs loomed up on either hand; in a hollow on the
left twinkled a drowsy little town; a beautiful stillness lay on all.

After an hour's interval a shout was heard from far down the river; then
later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and
the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the
passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search.
Basil heard a hollow, moaning, gurgling sound, regular as that of the
machinery, for some note of which he mistook it. "Clear the gangway
there!" shouted a gruff voice; "man