e, wild with horror, upon the extremity of the latter. Then came a
shock which flung him, bruised, partly stunned, to the deck.

Keeping his presence of mind amid the awful and appalling crash, he
managed to save his head from injury; then, before he could rise, came
another shock more jarring, more shivering than the first, and with it
the blasting screech of escaping steam. He saw a heavy body, flung from
the bridge, fall head downwards. He heard the grinding, crunching sound
of that cut-water shearing through strong iron plates; the frantic
shrieks and yells now arising beneath, which even the deafening
demoniacal blast from the steampipe could not drown. Then, his confused
senses whirling round, he saw the great hull--the towering cut-water
which had crashed into them right amidships, recede and vanish into the
mist. The _Scythian_ floated once more alone upon the fog-enshrouded
waters, and it needed no abnormal instinct of prescience to tell that
very soon she would float no longer.

And now there followed the most indescribable scene of terror and
confusion ever witnessed in the annals of ocean tragedy. The saloon
passengers, already alarmed and uneasy by the repeated blasts of the
foghorn, came pouring up the companion; crowding, crushing past each
other in their furious panic. The second-class passengers, too, from
the tore part of the ship, tore aft, crying that the water was already
flooding their cabins. Each fed the other's fears; till the decks were
alive with what seemed nothing less than a surging crowd of shrieking,
fighting maniacs. And then, to complete the chaotic unwieldy horror of
the situation, the time-expired men made a rush for the boats, and
casting two of them loose before they could be prevented, poured over
the side into them with the result of capsizing both.

Not all behaved thus. There were several cool heads among them, but in
such a minority as to be utterly powerless to sway that screeching,
frantic mob. And when it was discovered that the captain was lying
atone dead, having been hurled to the deck by the shock when about to
descend from the bridge, and the chief officer so injured as to be
unconscious and beyond recovery, why then, all hope of quelling the
panic was over. In vain the remaining ship's officers strove to guard
the boats with revolvers. The weapons were knocked from their grasp,
and themselves trampled under foot or hustled overboard. The stalwart
quarte