The frightened people hurried along through the driving rain and the
darkness, some of them slipping on the streaming deck and sliding
pell-mell to the rail, which broke away with the impact in one place and
precipitated several screaming persons into the ocean.

Hurriedly Tom counted those around the hatch and found that the officer
had evidently included him among the sixteen who should man it.

"Do you mean for me to go too?" he asked, in his usual dull manner.

"You might as well," the officer answered brusquely.

The great vessel had lost all its pride and dignity, and seemed a poor,
reeling, spiritless thing. The deck was deserted save for the little
group about the hatch who strove with might and main to launch this last
poor medium of rescue. The abrupt pitch of the deck made their frantic
efforts seem all but hopeless, and walking, even standing, was quite out
of the question. Tom could feel the ship heeling over beneath him.

Even the cheerily authoritative voice of the megaphone up on the bridge
had now ceased, and there was no reassuring reminder of life
there--nothing but the black outline of the trestled structure, slanting
at a dreadful angle with the water pouring from it.

Tom and his distracted companions were evidently the last on board.

The rail was now so low that the plunge of the hatch would not be very
hazardous at all events, for the seething waters beat over the deck now
and again, rolling up as on a beach at the seashore and adding their
ominous chill to Tom's already chilled body.

Out of the turmoil of the sea sounds rose, some the even tones of
command, sounding strangely out of place in the storm; others which he
recognized with a shudder as the last frightful gasps of drowning
persons.

In a minute--two minutes--he would be plunged into that seething brine
where he still might hear but could not see. Instinctively he increased
his exertions with this makeshift raft which, if they could but cling to
it till the sea subsided, might bear them up until succor came.

As soon as the hatch was raised, it began to slide away, and those who
had lifted it jumped upon it, clinging as best they could.

From somewhere out of the darkness a man came rushing pell-mell for this
precarious refuge. As he jumped upon it, clutching frantically at the
moulding around its edge, Tom stepped off.

The angle of the careening ship was now so steep that he could not stand
upon the deck, but as he sl