the sleepy crew lending an extraordinarily willing hand when they realized that their belongings were in peril. On the painful events following the captain's appearance, I will not dwell. Suffice it to say that I received the smartest lacing the old man could give me, the memory of which remained with me long after I had left the merchant service. But the moral is obvious. Anything more ludicrous than stove pipes passing through unprotected wooden bulkheads it would be hard to imagine, yet such is the conservatism of the sea that it is by no means uncommon to find such conditions even today in small coasters and smacks.
The foregoing was my first fire at sea, but I was fated to have another experience of a more serious character. I happened to be quartermaster in the old "Abyssinia" of the now defunct Guion Line, plying between New York and Liverpool. We had sailed from the former port in the month of July, with nine hundred passengers of all classes and a full cargo of cotton. About 280 miles east of Cape Race a fire was discovered in the main hold, which, though located in the middle of the night, was kept from the passengers' knowledge till the noon of the following day, when the united efforts of the crew had been found insufficient to cope with the outbreak. The captain then decided to call upon the passengers to lend a hand, and men and women from saloon, intermediate and steerage, bravely combined with the sailors in their dangerous task. Happily the sea was smooth and, to the lasting credit of all concerned, there was no panic.
Steam was used to fight the burning cotton, and as the seamen were overcome by smoke in the darkness of the hold, volunteers took their places, with the result that after three days of incessant labour the outbreak was under control. Had there been a panic or had the flames gained the upper hand, the result would have been hideous beyond words since there were only boats to accommodate three hundred persons. It only remains to add that Queenstown was made in safety without any casualty, and though the incident lacks any spectacular element, it contains material
