I had been watching carefully the list of the steamer, and by now I was confident that she wouldn’t float and that the end was coming fast. I remembered one or two personal things in my stateroom which I very much wanted, and I figured that I had time to go down and get them. If I didn’t come through the final plunge, I wanted to feel I had them with me, and if I did get through, I was just as sure I wanted them, so there didn’t seem anything to do but to get them, which I did. There was a companion-way for’ard of the main staircase, about half-way between it and my stateroom, so I went along the port passage inside of deck A, down that companion-way, and along the starboard passage to my stateroom. It was not until I walked along this passage that I realized how acute was the list of the ship. My stateroom was an inside one without a porthole, and consequently could be lighted only by electricity. I pressed the switch, but the light had gone, so I put my hand on a box of matches; for each night when I retired I placed a box in a particular place, just in case I needed it. With the aid of these matches I found the little article for which I was looking, opened my travelling bag, and took out some papers which included my passport and other envelopes that could easily be slipped into my inside pocket. I had kept my drafts on my person, for I figured that there was no use in giving them to the purser, except as a precaution against theft, and that was negligible. If what had happened was to happen, I knew there would be no time to reclaim them from the purser. I made my way back along the passage, walking in the angle formed by the floor and the side walls of the staterooms rather than the floor, and went back up the for’ard companion-way, the same that I came down. Going along the passage (on deck B) I looked down some of the cross passages that lead to the staterooms, and at the bottom of the ones I passed I saw that the portholes were open and that the water could not have been more than a few feet from them. Here let me state that I consider it most extraordinary that the portholes on the lower decks should not have been _closed_ and _sealed_ as we steamed through the war zone. At luncheon the portholes in the dining-saloon on deck D were open, and so I doubt not that all the others on that deck were open. I mean those in the staterooms. I cannot speak with certainty in regard to the portholes on deck E. I believe that the first list the ship took brought her down to these open ports on the starboard side and that she sank much more quickly from filling through them.