“Now don’t get excited!” the clerk was shouting, in a way little adapted to calm the passengers’ fears. “The life-saving crew is right alongside of us, and they’ll get us all off. Keep cool, ladies; keep cool.” “How deep is the water here at the foot of the falls?” Dick asked the clerk. “Sixty feet!” was the whispered reply; “deepest place on the river.” Dick started for the lower deck, but on the way he nearly ran into a woman with two little girls and no man to help her. They had secured a life preserver somewhere, and the woman was frantically trying to fasten it to the smaller girl. He instantly brought his good sense to bear for the relief of the frightened family. “Let me show you how to fasten that, madam,” he said as coolly as though he were talking about strapping a valise; and he drew up a chair and sat down and took the little girl on his knee. “Not that you’re going to need it now,” he went on, “but it’s as well to understand these things. We are not in any danger; and anyhow I shall stay right here by you and take care of you. You sit down on the other knee” (to the larger child) “there; now you’re just as safe as if papa had you, for I could swim this river a dozen times without losing my breath.” A hundred shouts of “Keep cool” and “Don’t be excited” could not have quieted the little family as Dick’s quiet, confident manner did. “Two steamboats have got us!” somebody cried at the after end of the cabin; “one on each side of us.” This caused a rush to the forward and after decks, and the passengers saw that a big steamboat was made fast on each side. The whistling had called them to the sinking boat’s assistance, and they were helping her to a shallow place of safety. The life-saving crew were on board, too; and they helped give the people confidence. Now that any one who chose could step to the deck of one of the other boats, nobody cared to go. Slowly the three boats together moved toward the Kentucky shore; and when they were close by the lower end of the canal by which boats avoid the falls in going up the river, one of them let go and drew ahead, and the other pushed the Belle of the River close against the rocky shore. She had hardly lain there two minutes before down she went to the very bottom with all on board. But fortunately the bottom of the river was not more than two feet below the bottom of the boat, for it was a shallow flat that had been selected to let her sink in; and when she rested upon the mud the water did not reach her lower deck. “I knew it! I knew it!” cried Dick’s woman with the two little girls. “I just felt it in my bones that something was going to happen when we started on a Friday. I don’t know what ever possessed me to do it. And when that negro man hoodooed the boat, that just finished us.”