I turned into my stateroom soon after ten o’clock, and then happened a thing which will hold a place in my memory so long as I have one.  I did not feel sleepy, but I was nervous, restless, and half sick.  I lay on my lounge for perhaps half an hour, and then felt impelled to go on deck.  I wrapped myself in a great waterproof ulster, pulled my storm cap over my ears, and climbed the companionway.  Two or three electric bulbs in sheltered places on deck only served to make the darkness more intense.  I crawled forward of the ladies’ cabin, and, supporting myself against the donkey-engine, peered at the light above the crow’s-nest and tried to think that I could see the man on watch in the nest.  I did see him for an instant, when the next flash of lightning came, and also two officers on the bridge; and I knew that Captain Bahrens was in the chart house.  When the next flash came, I saw the other lookout man making his short turns on the narrow space of bow deck, and was tempted to join him; why, I do not know.  I crept past the donkey-engine, holding fast to it as I went, until I reached the iron gate that closes the narrow passage to the bow deck.  With two silver dollars in my teeth I staggered across this rail-guarded plank, and when the next flash came I was sitting at the feet of the lookout man with the two silver dollars in my outstretched hand.  He took the money, and let me crawl forward between the anchors and the high bulwark of the bows.

The sensations which this position gave me were strange beyond description.  Darkness was thick around me; at one moment I was carried upward until I felt that I should be lost in the black sky, and the next moment the downward motion was so terrible that the blacker water at the bottom of the sea seemed near.  I cannot say that I enjoyed it, but I could not give it up.

When the great bow rose, I stood up, and, looking over the bulwark, tried to see either sky or water, but tried in vain, save when the lightning revealed them both.  When the bow fell, I crouched under the bulwark and let the sea comb over me.  How long I remained at this weird post, I do not know; but I was driven from it in such terror as I hope never to feel again.

An unusually large wave carried me nearer the sky than I liked to be, and just as the sharp bow of the great iron ship was balancing on its crest for the desperate plunge, a glare of lightning made sky and sea like a sheet of flame and curdled the blood in my veins.  In the trough of the sea, under the very foot of the immense steamship, lay a delicate pleasure-boat, with its mast broken flush with its deck, and its helpless body the sport of the cruel waves.

The light did not last longer than it would take me to count five, but in that time I saw four figures that will always haunt me.  Two sailors in yachting costume were struggling hopelessly with the tiller, and the wild terror of their faces as they saw the huge destruction that hung over them is simply unforgettable.