mind. He spent his time in running about the ship giving many orders, the majority of which were to no great purpose. Meanwhile he did not notice that part of the crew, from fear of being blown up, had lowered the boats and were getting ready to leave the ship. The civilian director, who had just told the captain to save the gunpowder, had been the first to join in the flight. He was soon safely riding the waves in a small boat far away from the doomed ship. [Illustration] For those who had been deserted on board there was only one way to salvation; they must try to put out the fire or be killed. Under personal command of their captain they set to work and pumped and pumped and pumped. But the fire had reached several barrels of oil, and there was a dense smoke. It was impossible to throw 310 barrels of powder overboard in the suffocating atmosphere of the hold, yet the men tried to do it. They worked with desperate speed, but before the sixth part of the dangerous cargo was in the waters of the ocean the fire reached the forward part, where the powder was stored. A few moments later one hundred and ninety men were blown skyward, together with pieces of the masts and pieces of the ship and heavy iron bars and pieces of sail and everything that belongs to a well-equipped vessel. "And I, Captain Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe, commander of the ship, also flew through the sky, and I thought that my end had come. So I stretched my hands and arms toward heaven and said: 'O dear Lord, there I go! Please have pity upon this miserable sinner!' because I thought that now the next moment I must be dead; but all the time I was flying through the air I kept my mind clear, and I found that there was happiness in my heart; yes, I even found that I was quite gay, and so came down again, and landed in the water between pieces of the ship which had been blown into little scraps." [Illustration] This is the captain's own minute account of the psychology of being blown up. He continues: "And when I was now once in the water of the sea, I felt my courage return in such a way that it was as if I had become a new man. And when I looked around I found a piece of the mainmast floating at my side, and so I climbed on top of it, and looking over the scene around me, I said, 'O Lord, so hath this fine ship been destroyed even as Sodom and Gomorrah.'" [Illustration]