if life depended on his eyesight—­as indeed it does.  But there comes a bright evening, and the monster liner’s journey is all but over; three hours more of steaming and she will be safe.  A little schooner comes skimming up on the port side—­and the schooner is to the liner as a chip is to a tree-trunk.  The schooner holds on her course, for she is not bound to give way at all; but the officer on the bridge of the steamer thinks, “I shall lose a quarter of an hour if I edge away to starboard and let him fall astern of us.  I shall keep right on and shave his bows.”  The liner is going at nineteen knots, the schooner is romping along at eight—­yet the liner cannot clear the little vessel.  There comes a fresh gust of wind; the sailing vessel lies over to it, and just touches the floating hotel amidships—­but the touch is enough to open a breach big enough for a coach and four to go through.  The steamer’s head is laid for the land and every ounce of steam is put on, but she settles and settles more and more.  And now what about the thirteen boats for a thousand people?  There is a wild scuffling, wild outcry.  Women bite their lips and-try, with divine patience, to crush down all appearance of fear, and to keep their limbs from trembling; some unruly fellows are kept in check only by terror of the revolver; and the officers remember that their fair name and their hope of earthly redemption are at stake.  In one case of this sort it took three mortal hours to ferry the passengers and crew over smooth water to the rescuing vessel; and those rescued folk may think themselves the most fortunate of all created souls, for, if the liner had been hit with an impetus of a few more tons, very few on board of her would have lived to tell the tale.  Unless passengers, at the risk of being snubbed and threatened, criticise the boat accommodation of great steamers, there will be such a disaster one day as will make the world shudder.

The pitiful thing is to know how easily all this might be prevented.  Until one has been on board a small vessel which has every spar, bolt, iron, and plank sound, one can have no idea how perfectly safe a perfectly-built ship is in any sort of weather.  A schooner of one hundred and fifty tons was caught in a hurricane which was so powerful that the men had to hang on where they could, even before the flattened foaming sea rose from its level rush and began to come on board.  All round were vessels in distress; the scare caused many of the seamen to forget their lights, and the ships lumbered on, first to collision, and then to that crashing plunge which takes all hands down.  The little schooner was actually obliged to offer assistance to a big mail-steamer—­and yet she might have been rather easily carried by that same steamer.  But the little vessel’s lights were watched with sedulous care; the blasts might tear at her scanty canvas, but there was not a rag or a rope that would give way; and, although the awful rush of the gale carried her within eight miles of