A few hours later they struggled awake at the sharp sound of the pilot's
bell signaling the engineer to slow the boat. There was a moment of
perfect silence; then all the drops of the chandeliers in the saloon
clashed musically together; then fell another silence; and at last came
wild cries for help, strongly qualified with blasphemies and curses.
"Send out a boat!" "There was a woman aboard that steamboat!" "Lower your
boats!" "Run a craft right down, with your big boat!" "Send out a boat
and pick up the crew!" The cries rose and sank, and finally ceased;
through the lattice of the state-room window some lights shone faintly on
the water at a distance.
"Wait here, Isabel!" said her husband. "We've run down a boat. We don't
seem hurt; but I'll go see. I'll be back in a minute."
Isabel had emerged into a world of dishabille, a world wildly unbuttoned
and unlaced, where it was the fashion for ladies to wear their hair down
their backs, and to walk about in their stockings, and to speak to each
other without introduction. The place with which she had felt so familiar
a little while before was now utterly estranged. There was no motion of
the boat, and in the momentary suspense a quiet prevailed, in which those
grotesque shapes of disarray crept noiselessly round whispering
panic-stricken conjectures.
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