“She’s there!” says Corkey, feeling the taut line.  “She’s there, and the rope is good.  The davit is good.”

The people below seem to know that a boat is being put out.  But Corkey is the only man on the ship who thinks the idea practicable.  “Of what use to lower a small boat,” say the sailors, “in Georgian Bay?”

The man above must descend on that little line.  He doesn’t want to do that.  He goes to the other boat, and makes a feeble experiment of hoisting and lowering, by means of both davits, the man to sit in the yawl.  “I couldn’t do it!” he vows, and recrosses.

“What’ll I do when I get down there?” he mutters.  “How’ll I get loose?”

He must make his descent knife in hand.

“I can’t do it!” he says, and gets out his knife.  It is a large fur-handled hunting knife—­like Corkey in its style.

Corkey peers down on deck.  The wood-choppers are fastening life-preservers about their bodies.  Whether they be crying or shouting, cannot be told.

He sees human forms hurrying past the cabin window, and there is reflected the yellow, wooden, ribby thing which he knows to be a life-preserver.

It is a cheering thing in such a moment.  “I wish I had one,” he says, but he holds to the rope of his boat.

There is no crew, in the proper sense of the word.  Not an officer or man on board feels a responsibility for the lives of the passengers.  As at a country summer resort, each person must wait on himself.

“Nobody is better’n we are,” says the captain.

The Africa is rapidly foundering.

“She must be as rotten as punk,” sneers Corkey.  He thinks of his cheerful desk at the newspaper office.  He thinks of his marine register.  He tries to recall the rating of this hulk of an Africa.

“Anyhow, it is tough!” he laments.

The wind is perhaps less boisterous since the engine slacked.  The rays of light from the cabin lamps pierce and split the waves.  Corkey never saw so much foam before.

“It’s an easy good-bye for all of us,” he says, and falls ill.

But shall he wait for the Africa to settle?

“She’ll pull me down, sure!” he comments.

Shall he wait much longer, then?

“All them roosters will be up here, and then we can’t do nothing.  Yet
I wish I had somebody with me.  Oh, Lockwin!  I say, hello!  Old man! 
Lockwin!  Come up this way!”

For a moment there is nothing to be heard but the furious whistling of the gale about the mast in front.  There is nobody in the wheel-house to the best of Corkey’s eyesight.

There are three or four booming sounds.  Corkey is startled.  They are repeated.

It is the yawl making its hollow sound.

But there are no noises of human beings.  “Oddest thing I ever see!” says Corkey.  “I didn’t know a shipwreck was like this.  Everything is different from what is printed—­Lord save me!”