Rudyard Kipling

“ Then the deck-passengers got wind of it, and all Hell woke up along the decks.
"The rule in these little affairs is to get your saloon passengers off first, then to fill the boats with the balance, and afterwards—God help the extras, that’s all. I was getting the starboard stern boat—the mail-boat—away. It hung as it might be over yonder, and as I came along from the cuddy, the deck-passengers hung round me, shoving their money-belts into my hand, taking off their nose-rings and earrings, and thrusting ’em upon me to buy just one chance for life. ”

“ The sea air affects their insides. Well, as I was saying, we settled down in the boat. The Captain’s wife was unconscious; she lay in the bottom of the boat and moaned. I was glad she wasn’t threshing about the boat: but what I did think was wrong, was the way the two men passengers behaved. They were useless with funk—out and out fear. They lay in the boat and did nothing. Fetched a groan now and again to show they were alive; but that was all. But the other woman was a jewel. Damn it, it was worth being shipwrecked to have that woman in the boat ”

“ Protect them whereso’er they go.
Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise by land and sea."
"Strikes me they’ll go on singing that hymn all night. Imperfect sort of doctrine in the last lines, don’t you think? They might have run in an extra verse specifying sudden collapse—like the Visigoth’s. I’m going on to the bridge, now. Good-night," said the Captain. ”