The deck bounded up under them.  She gripped Jan’s coat and Jan gripped a chair that was screwed to the floor; and then the deck rolled far down and Jan’s chair came loose, and both were thrown across the saloon.  “She is breaking up!” thought Jan.  A moment later it seemed to Jan as if all the passengers in the ship had suddenly awakened and were trying to crowd into the place.  A ship’s officer and some stewards also came running in.  The stewards had life-preservers, which they were buckling on to themselves.  They remained; but the officer, after a look around, ran out again.

The boat rolled back on her keel.  Jan led Mrs. Goles to the outer deck.  Goles was there.  “Come!” ordered Jan, and led the way to an iron ladder.  The boat rolled far to one side and again far to the other.  Mrs. Goles felt as if she were clinging to the tail of a kite, but still she clung to Jan; and Jan at last made the upper deck with her.  He had forgotten her husband; but when he turned to look back the muffled form was there at his heels.

Jan groped his way to where the life-raft was lashed to the deck.  He ordered Mrs. Goles to sit down on the raft.  Goles sat down beside her.  Goles seemed bereft of all volition.

“You wait here till I come back,” Jan said to him and turning to go below, bumped into another man.

“Hello!  Is this you?” said the other man.  “I thought I saw you come up here.  ‘And there’s the man,’ I says to myself, ‘to tie to to-night!’”

Jan recognized the bartender.  “You’re just the man I want, too,” said Jan.  He dove into his pocket and drew out a revolver.  “Here, take this.”

“A gun!”

“Yes—­and loaded.  Watch that man on the raft.  And if he tries to hurt that woman or not let her on that raft if the boat goes down, shoot him!”

“You mean it?”

“Yes.  He’s bad!  He’s the man who was drinking in your place a few minutes ago—­after me.”

“Oh, him!  Yes; he’s bad, all right.  He’s been drinking raw brandy since seven o’clock.  I was noticin’ him.”

“Don’t shoot him unless you have to.  And don’t let him see me passing it to you.  I’m going to get a few more people up to the raft.”

“All right—­but—­Wow!  I never shot a man in my life.”

Jan had hardly reached the saloon when the great crash came.  He was swept away before it.  Boom! it was—­and again, crash!  Now he heard the smothered appeals of people being swept overboard!  Crackling wood was following the crash of every sea, and each sea receded only to let the next one strike even more heavily.  It was now nothing but solid water that was coming aboard.

Her buoyancy had left her.  Her roll had become a wallow.  She was settling.  “The water’s in her hold!” thought Jan, and took a quick look about.  All kinds and all ages—­but there was one girl with an expression on her face that startled him.

In fine but sodden clothes she was sitting, heedless of every person but the young man standing dumbly beside her.  “And I told them I was going to stay with a girl friend out of town over Sunday,” she was saying.  “And now they’ll know.  Whether we’re drowned or not they’ll know.  Everybody will know and what will they say?”