Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/438

 Living in a Giant Life-Buoy

Within are accommodations for a dozen shipwrecked passengers

��UNDERNEATH, the ship's engines vi- brate steadily, the big propellers at the stern driving all on board nearer and nearer England.

Then comes a roar — a thud. All through the ship runs a great shudder. There is a \iolent rending and tearing, and up from the boiler-room comes a huge puff of smoke, the hiss of escaping steam, the shriek of dying stokers and the smell of fire.

There is no need for explanation. It is evident enough that a submarine has launched a torpedo only too effectively. Up on deck rush passengers and crew. Their one thought is the lifeboats. Has the ship lifeboats?

It has. They're of a new kind. They look like enormous tops all ready to spin. Inside are rows upon rows of seats. There are four or five of the giant boats (buoys they are) scattered along each side of the ship, next to the rail. Into hatches in the uppermost side of these curious buoys call them by right name) — the people — so to each buoy.

��(let's their pour many The ship is listing rapidly. Also the fire seems to be gaining headway. Smoke

rolls out of the stack and surges through openings in the deck and from cabin win- dows. At the far end

All that is left when the ship sinks, is a little colony of lifeboats, or rather, life-buoys, floating away from the wreck. Many people can be housed in rela- tive safety inside

��of the ship water already reaches the rail.

Stragglers scramble madly about the deck. Suddenly hatches are clamped down on the lifeboats at the water-logged end of the great ship. The life-buoys half slide, half float off into the water, some of them dipping a fathom or two beneath the surface as a re- sult of their momentum. In a moment, however, they bob up like corks.

Suddenly the looming bulk of the huge ship upends itself, water sliding in great sheets off of the exposed portion. Down the ship plunges, wallowing and eddying as it goes under, smoke and flame pouring from the superstructure. Stragglers and the life-

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