the stern of the boat fell while the bow remained fixed, and every soul in it-they numbered forty or fiftywas shot out into the water. Another one, full of women and children, got to the water safely, but remained fastened to the ship by the bow tackle. When, a couple of minutes afterwards, the Kangaroo went down, nobody had a knife at hand wherewith to cut the rope, the boat was dragged down with her, and all its occupants drowned.*

The remaining boats, with the exception of the one in which Lady Holmhurst was, and which had been got away before the rush began, were never lowered at all, or sank as soon as lowered. It was impossible. to lower them owing to the mad behaviour of the panic-stricken crowds, who fought like wild beasts for a place in them. A few gentlemen and soberheaded sailors could do nothing against a mob of frantic creatures, each bent on saving his own life, even if it cost the lives of all else on board.

And thus it was exactly twenty minutes from the time that the Kangaroo sank the whaler (for, although these events have taken some time to describe, they did not take long to enact) that her own hour came, and, with the exception of some eight-and-twenty souls, all told, the hour also of every living creature who had taken passage in her.

*A similar incident occurred in the case of the Teuton, which foundered some years ago on the South African coast.

CHAPTER VIII

KERGUELEN LAND

As soon as Mr. Meeson, saved from drowning by her intervention, lay gasping at the bottom of the boat, Augusta, overcome by a momentary faintness, let her head fall forward on to the bundle of blankets in which she had wrapped up the child she had rescued, and who, too terrified to speak or cry, stared about him with widely-opened and frightened eyes. When she lifted it, a few seconds later, a ray from the rising sun had pierced the mist, and striking full on the sinking ship, as, her stern well out of the water and her bow well under it, she rolled sullenly to and fro in the trough of the sea, seemed to wrap her from hull to truck in wild and stormy light.

She's going!-by George, she's going!" said the seaman Johnnie; and as he said it the mighty ship slowly reared herself up on end. Slowly-very slowly, amidst the hideous and despairing yells of the doomed wretches on board of her, she lifted her stern higher and higher, and plunged her bows deeper and deeper They shrieked, they cried to Heaven for help; but Heaven heeded them not, for man's agony cannot avert man's doom. Now, for a space, her screw still racing furiously, she was standing almost upright upon the water, out of which more than a hundred feet of her vast length towered like some monstrous ocean growth, whilst, like flies benumbed by

frost, men fell from her in showers, down into the churning foam beneath. Then suddenly, with a swift and awful rush, with a rending sound of breaking spars, a loud explosion of her boilers, and a smothered boom of bursting bulkheads, she plunged down into the fathomless depths and was seen no more for ever.

The water closed in over where she had been, boiling and foaming and sucking down all things in the wake of her last journey, while the steam and prisoned air came up in huge hissing jets and bubbles that exploded into spray on the surface.

The men groaned, the child stared stupefied, and Augusta cried out, "Oh! oh!" like one in pain.

Row back! she gasped,

cannot pick some of them up."

row back and see if we

"No! no!" shouted Meeson; "they will sink the boat!'

""Tain't much use anyway," said Johnnie. "I doubt that precious few of them will come up again. They have gone too deep!"

However, they got the boat's head round-slowly enough, Augusta thought-and as they did so heard a feeble cry or two. But by the time that they had reached the spot where the Kangaroo went down, there was no living creature to be seen; nothing but the wash of the great waves, over which the mist once more closed thick and heavy as a pall. They shouted, and once they heard a faint answer, and rowed towards it; but when they got to the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed, they could see nothing except some wreckage. They were all dead, their agony was done, their cries no more ascended to the pitiless

heavens; and wind, and sky, and sea were just as they had been.

"Oh, my God! my God!" wept Augusta, clinging to the thwarts of the tossing boat.

"One boat got away-where is it?" asked Mr. Meeson, who, a wet and wretched figure, was huddled in the stern-sheets, as he rolled his wild eyes round, striving to pierce the curtain of the mist.

"There's something," said Johnnie, pointing through a fog-dog in the mist, that seemed to grow denser rather than otherwise as the light increased, at a round, boatlike object which had suddenly appeared to the starboard of them.

They rowed up to it; it was a boat, but empty, and floating bottom upwards. Closer examination showed that it was the cutter, which, when full of women and children, had been fastened to the vessel and dragged down with her as she sank. At a certain depth the pressure of the water had torn the ring in the bow bodily out of her, so that she returned to the surface. But those in her did not return-at least, not yet. Once more, two or three days hence, they would arise from the watery depths and look upon the skies with eyes that could not see, and then vanish for ever.

Turning from this awful and most moving sight, they rowed slowly through quantities of floating wreckage-barrels, hencoops (in one of these they found two drowned fowls, which they secured), and many other articles, such as oars and wicker deck-chairs-and began to shout vigorously in the hope of attracting the attention of the survivors in the other boat, which they imagined could not be far off. Their efforts, however,

proved fruitless, since owing to the thickness of the fog, and in the considerable sea which was running, it was impossible to see more than twenty yards or so. Also, what between the wind, and the wash and turmoil of the water, the sound of their voices did not travel far. The ocean is a large place, and a rowing boat is easily lost sight of upon its furrowed surface; therefore it is not wonderful that, although the two boats were at the moment within half a mile of each other, they never met, and each took its separate course in the hope of escaping the fate of the vessel.

The boat in which were Lady Holmhurst and some twenty other passengers, together with the second officer and a crew of six men, after seeing the Kangaroo sink and picking up one survivor, shaped a course for Kerguelen Land, believing that they, and they alone, remained to tell the tale of that awful shipwreck. And here it may be convenient to state that before nightfall they were picked up by a sealing-whaler, that sailed with them to Albany, on the coast of Australia, Thence an account of the disaster, which, as the reader will remember, created a deep impression, was telegraphed home, and thence, in due course, the widowed Lady Holmhurst and most of the other, women who escaped were taken back to England.

To return to our heroine and Mr. Meeson.

The occupants of the little boat sat looking at each other with white scared faces, till at last the man called Johnnie, who, by the way, was not a tar of a very amiable cast of countenance, possibly owing to the fact that his nose was knocked almost flat against the side