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the full breadth of the ship, that either crippled or killed those passengers and serving stewards who had the misfortune to be near the centre or the far starboard side of the ship as she careened over to port.
    The more fortunate ones were those at the side tables to port. Muller, Belle and Manny Rosen were simply spilled out of their chairs. The Shelbys and the occupants of the grab-bag table had not much farther to go and were able to break their descent by holding on for a moment to their seats. Manny Rosen landed upon the rectangle of the window with nothing between him and the green sea but the thick glass.
    But so swift and continuous was the capsizing, that before the pressure of the water could fracture it, the Poseidon's entire superstructure came thundering down, burying itself in the sea. The port windows, now starboard, were raised up and cleared themselves. Manny, clutching wildly at Belle, found himself sliding head-first along with the Rogos, the Shelbys and the others, down the slanting side of the vessel to land on the glass-covered ceiling amidst a mass of broken china, trays, cutlery and food. The topmost branches of the Christmas tree which had come tumbling out of its tub, the ornamental star affixed to its peak unbroken, fell upon them.
    The moment of sealed-in quiet that followed the death cry of the ship contained more of horror and menace than the nerve-shattering clamour, for it uncovered the small, helpless noises of the injured and dying: murmurs, moans, pleadings, the occasional tinkling drop of some errant utensil that had lagged behind and the rolling about in the pantries of pots that had not yet managed to come to rest.
    During the instant, just as it appeared that the ship was about to blow herself apart before the final plunge, Mike Rogo was heard to say, 'Jesus Christ! Someone get off my leg, will you?'
    Thereupon there occurred an appalling explosion initiating a series of detonations as three of her boilers blew up.
    If the first outcry of the stricken vessel had been a shriek, her second following the explosions was a shattering, ear-rending roar as her innards broke away.
    The remaining boilers came loose first. Their pathway to the sea lay through two of the three giant stacks of the liner and they went down with the noise of a thousand men hammering upon sheet iron.
    The engine room came apart more slowly, as the heavy turbines, dynamos, generators and pumps hanging downwards, imposed an intolerable strain upon the steel that clamped them to the floor. With the grinding outcry ot tortured metal, they began to crash down the ship-high rectangular shaft over the engine room and through the glass roof to join the boilers at the bottom of the sea.
    Some of these, instead of dislodging completely, fractured to slide sideways and tangle with yet other break-away parts to jam together in a mass of tangled steel, torn piping and uncovered armatures. The S.S. Poseidon seemed to be retching up her bowels in mortal agony.
    She did this to such an awful continuity of sounds: splintering wood, a whine of tearing metal, thunderclaps, surgings, hissings, great boomings accompanied by suckings and bubblings that the survivors still crumpled in heaps upon the ceiling-floor, could descend no further down the paths of terror.
    They could only lie there stunned and deafened by the grinding, rumbling and thunderous poom-boom as of some great war drum, clangour of metal striking upon metal and the shouting of steam loosed as though from the anteroom of hell.
    Once a great muddy cascade of water shot into the dining-saloon as though expelled from a cannon. But it ceased as abruptly as it had come, ran off into the opening made by the top of the grand staircase and which now, upside-down, had become a watery pit.
    Then all the lights went out.

CHAPTER III
    Reprieve

    Yet, by some mystery of buoyancy connected with air trapped in the spaces now emptied of cargo, boilers and heavy machinery, the Poseidon