There was a long, broken, mingled, discordant shriek as of a dozen voices on different keys uttering cries of terror and despair.  There was the confusion of one person falling over another; there was the wild grasping for support, the seizing of each other’s garments and arms, the undefined and undefinable struggle of the first desperate minute after a boat has capsized, the scream that dies to a gurgle in the water and then breaks out afresh, louder and sharper than before, and then is suddenly smothered into a gurgle again.  There were all these things, there was an alarm on the shore, a rush of people, and then there came stillness, and those minutes of desperate waiting, in which the drowning people cling to rigging and boat, and test the problem of human endurance.  It is a race between the endurance of frightened, chilled, drowning people, and the stupid lack of presence of mind of those on shore.  All the inmates of the boat got hold of something, and for a minute all their heads were out of water.  Their eyes were so near to the water, that not even the most self-possessed of them could see what exertions were being made by people on shore to help them.  Thus they clung a minute, no one saying anything, when Jane Downing, who held to the rigging at some distance from the boat, paralyzed by fear, let go, and slowly sank out of sight, saying never a word as she went down, but looking with beseeching eyes at the rest, who turned away as the water closed over her, and held on more tenaciously than ever, and wondered whether help ever would reach them.  And this was only at the close of the first minute.  There were twenty-nine other minutes before help came.

CHAPTER XXIII.

SINKING.

Isabel Marlay’s first care had been to see that little Katy had a good hold.  Helen Minorkey was quite as self-possessed, but her chief care was to get into a secure position herself.  Nothing brings out character more distinctly than an emergency such as this.  Miss Minorkey was resolute and bent on self-preservation from the first moment.  Miss Marlay was resolute, but full of sympathy for the rest.  With characteristic practical sense, she did what she could to make herself and those within her reach secure, and then with characteristic faith she composed her mind to death if it should come, and even ventured with timid courage to exhort Katy and Miss Minorkey to put their trust in Christ, who could forgive their sins, and care for them living or dying.  Even the most skeptical of us respect a settled belief in a time of trial.  There was much broken praying from others, simply the cry of terror-stricken spirits.  In all ages men have cried in their extremity to the Unseen Power, and the drowning passengers in Diamond Lake uttered the same old cry.  Westcott himself, in his first terror, prayed a little and swore a little by turns.