Above the sound of the dashing and rocking waves, the straining and roaring of hacking engines and the pandemonium of voices rose from one end of the ship to the other, one wild, despairing, long-drawn shriek of women and children.

Bettina turned sick at the mad terror in it--the insensate, awful horror.
"Something has run into us!" she gasped, getting up with her heart leaping in her throat.
She could hear the Worthingtons' tempest of terrified confusion through the partitions between them, and she remembered afterwards that in the space of two or three seconds, and in the midst of their clamour, a hundred incongruous thoughts leaped through her brain.

Perhaps they were this moment going down.

Now she knew what it was like! This thing she had read of in newspapers! Now she was going down in mid-ocean, she, Betty Vanderpoel! And, as she sprang to clutch her fur coat, there flashed before her mental vision a gruesome picture of the headlines in the newspapers and the inevitable reference to the millions she represented.
"I must keep calm," she heard herself say, as she fastened the long coat, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering.

"Poor Daddy--poor Daddy!" Maddening new sounds were all about her, sounds of water dashing and churning, sounds of voices bellowing out commands, straining and leaping sounds of the engines.