The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-05-07

SYNOPSIS OF PRECEDING :
 CHAPTERS.
 The great steamer Titan, supposed to be unsuitable, starts across the Atlantic. Rowland, once a lieutenant now. a common sailor, meets his old love Myra. She is with her husband and child.
 . The Titan cuts a ship in two, and her captain endeavors to conceal the crime. Rowland objects. The cap- tain gives him whisky, so that he will be discredited. Myra accuses him of attempting to murder he1 child.
 Rowland is drugged by the cap. tain's order and is then given the starboard bridge lookout, so that ne will disgrace himself. Myra's child steals away and joins Rowland.
 (Coutinued.)
 solid, pyramid-like hummock of ice, left to starboard as the steamer ascended, and which projected close alongside the upper or boat deck as she fell over, had caught in success sion every pair. of davits to starboard, bending and wrenching them, smash ing boats and snapping tackles and gr1pes, until. as the ship cleared her self, it capped the pile of wreckage strewing the ice in front of and around it with the end and broken stanchions of the bridge. And in this shattered, box-like structure, dazed by the sweeping fall through an arc of seventy foot radius, crouched Row land. bleeding from a cut in his head and still holding to his breast the little sir1, now too frightened to cry.
 By an effort of will he aroused him. twisted and fixed to a shorter focus by the drug he had taken. the steamship was little more than a blotch on the moon whitened fog, yet he thought hez could seef men clambering and working on the upper davits, and the nearest hoat-No 24seemed to be swinging by the tackles. Then the fog shut her out. though her position was still indicated by the roaring of steam from her iron lungs. This ceased in time, leaving behind 1t the horrid humming sound and whistling of air. and when this, too, was suddenly hushed and the ensuing silence broken by dull, booming reports, as from bursting compartments, Rowland knew that the holocaust was complete; that the invineible Titan, with nearly all. of her people, unable to climb vertical floors and ceilings. was beneath the surface of the sea. .
 Mechanically his benumbed faculties had received and recorded the impress sions of the last few moments. He could not comprehend to the full the horror of it aH Yet his mind was keenly alive Co the peril of the woman whose appealing voice he had heard and recognized-the woman of his dream and the mother of the child in his arms. He hastily examined the wreckage. Not boat was intact. Creeping down to the waters edge, he hailed. with all the power of his weak voice. to possible but invisible boats beyond the fog, calling to them to come an0 save the child, to look out for a woman who had been on deck, under the bridge. He shouted this woman's name-the one that he knew-encour-
 
 float on wreckage and to answer him until he came to her. There was no response, and when his voice had grown hoarse and futile and his feet numb from the cold of the thawing ice, he returned to the wreckage, weighed down and all but crushed by the black est desolation that had so far come into his unhappy life. The little girl was crying and he tried to soothe her.
 '1 want mammav' she walled
 Flush, baby, hush," he answered wearily and bitterly. "So do I-more than heaven. But think our chances are about even now. Are you cold, lit- tie one? We'll go inside and I'll make . house for .us.'
 He removed his coat. tenderly wrapped the little figure. in it, and with the injunction, Don't be afraid, now," placed her in the corner of the bridge. which rested on it's forward side. As he did so the bottle of whisky fell out of the pocket. It seemed an age since he had foupd it there, and it required strong effort of reasoning before he remembered its full signifi- 0nce. Then he raised it to huri it Gown the incline of ice, but stopped 0lmself.
 ~Pn keep it, he muttefed. "It may be safe in small quantities, and we'll need it on this ice" He placed it in a corner; then, removing the canvas cover from one of the wrecked boats, he hung it over the open side and end of the bridge, erawled within and donned his coat-a ready made, slop chest garment designed for larger man-and, buttoning it around him. self and the little girl, lay down on the hard woodwork. She was stin cry ing, but soon. under the influence of the warmth of his body, ceased and went to sleep.
 Huddled in a corner, he gave himself up sto the torment of his thoughts Two pictures alternately crowded his mind-one that of the woman of his dream entreating him to come back which his memory chung to as an ora. sle: the other of this woman cold and Mfeless fathoms deep in the sea. He