ll that happened
to a man in less than a minute. The donkey engineman was killed on deck
sitting in front of his boiler. We found parts of some bodies--a hand,
or an arm or a leg. Below decks there were some twenty alive.

"The ship was on fire, of course, what was left of it. The stumps of
both masts were blazing. Aft she was like a furnace, but forward the
flames had not got below deck, so we four carried those who were still
alive on deck into the fo'c's'l. All of them were burned and most of
them were half strangled.

"One boy, a passenger and just a little shaver [the four-year-old son of
the late Clement Stokes, above spoken of] was picked up naked. His hair
and all his clothing had been burned off, but he was alive. We rolled
him in a blanket and put him in a sailor's bunk. A few minutes later we
looked at him and he was dead.

"My own son's gone, too. It had been his trick at lookout ahead during
the dog watch that morning, when we were making for St. Pierre, so I
supposed at first when the fire struck us that he was asleep in his bunk
and safe. But he wasn't. Nobody could tell me where he was. I don't know
whether he was burned to death or rolled overboard and drowned. He was
a likely boy. He had been several voyages with me and would have been a
master some day. He used to say he'd make me mate.

"After getting all hands that had any life left in them below and
'tended to the best we could, the four of us that were left half way
ship-shape started in to fight the fire. We had case oil stowed forward.
Thanks to that tidal wave that cleared our decks there wasn't much left
to burn, so we got the fire down so's we could live on board with it for
several hours more and then the four turned to to knock a raft together
out of what timber and truck we could find below. Our boats had gone
overboard with the masts and funnel.

PREPARED TO TRUST TO LUCK

"We made that raft for something over thirty that were alive. We put
provisions on for two days and rigged up a make-shift mast and sail,
for we intended to go to sea. We were only three boats' length from the
shore, but the shore was hell itself. We intended to put straight out
and trust to luck that the Korona, that was about due at St. Pierre,
would pick us up. But we did not have to risk the raft, for about 3
o'clock in the afternoon, when we were almost ready to put the raft
overboard, the Suchet came along and took us all off. We thought for a
minute ju