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Updated: June 16, 2025
The street door I was down a side turning, though bore that number. A visitor could make no mistake, supposing he could find the street and my side turning. That was it. There was a very great deal in this place for everybody to remember, and most of us were strangers. No doubt, however, we were afloat, if the lifebelts in the rack meant anything.
Meantime the captain had been busy handing lifebelts to the men and cheering them up with words and smiles, with no thought of his own safety." The ship went down in less than four minutes. The captain was the last man on board, going down with her, and was sucked under. On coming up he was caught under an upturned boat to which five hands were clinging.
At his door she said cheerfully: "No more undressing for bed, you know. No more luxury of night-clothes. You heard the orders about lifebelts?" "Yes," he replied listlessly. "Very well. I'll be waiting for you." She lingered a moment more watching him in his brooding revery where he stood leaning against the doorway. And after a while he raised his haunted eyes to hers.
Sharp, for she won't last more'n a couple of minutes. As he spoke, he flung Ken one of the life-saving waistcoats which are now used instead of the old-fashioned lifebelts. 'It's all right, he added, as he saw Ken glance at him sharply. 'I've got one, too. Ken did not waste a moment in slipping on the queer garment, and blowing it up.
Notwithstanding these precautions there was considerable danger in navigating the river in some parts, where occurred rapids and rocks, and occasionally as we were informed, a raft would get overturned or broken up, in which case the men in charge would have to swim for their lives or drown unless they had taken the precaution to provide themselves with lifebelts.
Then, too, the curious sense of the whole thing being a dream was very prominent: that all were looking on at the scene from a near-by vantage point in a position of perfect safety, and that those who walked the decks or tied one another's lifebelts on were the actors in a scene of which we were but spectators: that the dream would end soon and we should wake up to find the scene had vanished.
It is not the slightest exaggeration to say that no signs of alarm were exhibited by any one: there was no indication of panic or hysteria; no cries of fear, and no running to and fro to discover what was the matter, why we had been summoned on deck with lifebelts, and what was to be done with us now we were there.
So I got up, and found all the Americans on board wearing lifebelts, and greeting me with the remark, "Sir, you are a sailor, but there are more risks on our lakes than on the ocean!" and quite right they were. It was a long passage, and we put in to several places on our way. First into Detroit, formerly the French Fort Pontchartrain, and now become the capital of Michigan State.
Then, with hardly a sound, the fine ship slid slowly downwards, and a minute later there was no sign of her except a great eddy in which swung a tangled mass of timber, lifebelts, canvas chairs, and all sorts of floating objects from the decks. 'The brutes! growled Dave. 'This means that the Turks have got submarines. 'I doubt it. That was probably the work of an Austrian or German craft.
As soon as it burned up he searched for the lifebelts and by good fortune found two of them, one of which, not without great difficulty, he succeeded in fastening round her. Then he took a sponge and bathed her head with water.
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