the end.

But the girls stared, fascinated, too dazed by the tragedy to turn their
eyes away.

The life-savers, who had almost reached the ship, backed off a little,
knowing that they could not help the passengers now and fearful of being
drawn under by the suction themselves.

The great ship hesitated a moment, trembled convulsively through all her
frame, then her stern reared heavenward as though protesting against her
fate, and slowly, majestically, she sank from view beneath the swirling
waters.

Then the girls did turn their eyes away, and blindly, sobbingly, they
stumbled back through the crowd toward the lighthouse.

"Oh, Billie, Billie, they will all be drowned!" sobbed Laura. The tears
were running down her face unchecked. "Oh, what shall we do?"

"If they could only have held on just a few minutes more," said Vi,
white-faced, "the life-savers would then have had a chance to have taken
them off."

"They may save some of them anyway," said Billie, her voice sounding
strange even to herself. "The life-savers will pick up anybody who
manages to get free of the wreck, you know."

"Yes; but Uncle Tom says that when a ship sinks like that it is hard to
save anybody," said Connie, twisting her handkerchief into a damp little
ball. "Girls," she said, turning upon them eyes that were wide with
horror, "it makes me crazy to think of it. Out there, those people are
drowning!"

"Oh, don't" cried Billie, pressing her hands to her ears. "I--I can't
stand it. Girls, I've got to walk!" And Billie started off almost at a
run along the beach, fighting her way against the wind.

The other girls followed her, and for a while they ran along, not knowing
whither they were going, or caring. All they wanted was to forget the
horror of the thing they had seen.

"What's that?"

Billie stepped back so quickly that she almost lost her footing in the
slippery sand.

"What do you mean, Billie?"

"That!"

"Why, it--it looks like----"

"Come on. Let's find out." And Billie ran to the thing that looked like a
large piece of driftwood washed up on the sand by the heavy sea.

And as she reached it she drew in her breath sharply and brushed a hand
across her eyes to make sure she was not dreaming. On the thing that was
not a piece of driftwood at all, but looked like a sort of crudely and
hastily constructed raft, were lashed three small, unconscious little
forms.

"Girls, look!" she almost screamed above the shrill wind.