remark was too obvious to make
rejoinder necessary.

"Grab hold of something and hang on," the red-faced man said to me. All
his bluster had gone, and he seemed to have caught the contagion of
preternatural calm. "And listen to the women scream," he said
grimly--almost bitterly, I thought, as though he had been through the
experience before.

The vessels came together before I could follow his advice. We must have
been struck squarely amidships, for I saw nothing, the strange steamboat
having passed beyond my line of vision. The _Martinez_ heeled over,
sharply, and there was a crashing and rending of timber. I was thrown
flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the
scream of the women. This it was, I am certain,--the most indescribable
of blood-curdling sounds,--that threw me into a panic. I remembered the
life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept
backward by a wild rush of men and women. What happened in the next few
minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling
down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the red-faced man
fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group of women. This
memory is as distinct and sharp as that of any picture I have seen. It
is a picture, and I can see it now,--the jagged edges of the hole in the
side of the cabin, through which the grey fog swirled and eddied; the
empty upholstered seats, littered with all the evidences of sudden
flight, such as packages, hand satchels, umbrellas, and wraps; the stout
gentleman who had been reading my essay, encased in cork and canvas, the
magazine still in his hand, and asking me with monotonous insistence if I
thought there was any danger; the red-faced man, stumping gallantly
around on his artificial legs and buckling life-preservers on all
corners; and finally, the screaming bedlam of women.

This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves. It
must have tried, too, the nerves of the red-faced man, for I have another
picture which will never fade from my mind. The stout gentleman is
stuffing the magazine into his overcoat pocket and looking on curiously.
A tangled mass of women, with drawn, white faces and open mouths, is
shrieking like a chorus of lost souls; and the red-faced man, his face
now purplish with wrath, and with arms extended overhead as in the act of
hurling thunderbolts, is shouting, "Shut up! Oh, shut up!"