"Folks'll tread on 'em, I guess," he replied, and suddenly raised his head with a whimsical smile. "A man likes to do something useful at times like this--it's just our instinct," he added as if explaining something more for his own satisfaction than hers. "I'm not a seaman--I'd only get in peoples' way messing round the boats before they were ready--so I reckoned I'd pick up your candies." There were very few women onboard, and Cecily found herself the only woman allotted to the jolly-boat. She climbed in with the assistance of the very young and distressingly susceptible Fourth Officer. For a moment she found herself reflecting that his life must be one long martyrdom of unrequited affections. The stout American followed her with a number of other passengers. The Fourth Officer gave an order and the boat began to descend towards the waves in a succession of uneven jolts. The crew were getting their oars ready, and one was hammering the plug of the boat home with the butt of an enormous jack-knife. The stout American surveyed the tumbling sea beneath them distastefully. "When I get to Washington," he said, "I guess I'll fly round that li'll old town till some of our precious 'too-proud-to-fight' party just gnash their teeth and shriek aloud 'How can we bear it?'" He suddenly remembered that his pneumatic life-saving waistcoat was not inflated. Seizing the piece of rubber tubing that projected from his pocket he thrust it into his mouth and proceeded to blow with distended cheeks and his serious brown eyes fixed solemnly on Cecily's face. He was still blowing when they capsized. How the accident happened Cecily never knew: principally because she was concentrating her mind on the bottom of the boat and wondering how soon the pangs of _mal-de-mer_ might be expected to encompass her. But the fact remains that one moment the boat was rising and falling dizzily on the waves and the next, with a confused shouting of orders and a crash, they were all struggling in the water. Cecily's life-saving jacket brought her to the surface like a cork, and a couple of strokes took her to the side of the capsized boat and situation No. 2 already described. Here she was presently joined by the American, puffing and blowing like a grampus, who was placed in possession of statement (c) referred to above. He appeared either not to hear, however, or to incline to the view that it was a mere theory based upon a fallacy....