1 This it was, the screaming of the women, that most tried my nerves.
2 I was thrown flat on the wet deck, and before I could scramble to my feet I heard the scream of the women.
3 One boat lowered away with the plugs out, filled with women and children and then with water, and capsized.
4 These women, capable of the most sublime emotions, of the tenderest sympathies, were open-mouthed and screaming.
5 I confess that a madness seized me, that I shrieked aloud as the women had shrieked, and beat the water with my numb hands.
6 But I shall be a different women for the experience, as well as a stronger woman," she answered; "and, I hope a better woman.
7 All this, in frankness, to show my first impression, after long denial of women in general and of Maud Brewster in particular.
8 I remembered the life-preservers stored in the cabin, but was met at the door and swept backward by a wild rush of men and women.
9 For that matter, though not amative to any considerable degree so far as I have discovered, I was never outside the atmosphere of women until now.
10 Indeed, she was a slender, delicate woman as women go, but to me she was so ethereally slender and delicate that I was quite prepared for her arm to crumble in my grasp.
11 And north we travelled with it, ravaging and destroying, flinging the naked carcasses to the shark and salting down the skins so that they might later adorn the fair shoulders of the women of the cities.
12 I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces; I gat me men singers and women singers, and the delights of the sons of men, as musical instruments, and that of all sorts.
13 What happened in the next few minutes I do not recollect, though I have a clear remembrance of pulling down life-preservers from the overhead racks, while the red-faced man fastened them about the bodies of an hysterical group of women.
14 I remember the scene impelled me to sudden laughter, and in the next instant I realized I was becoming hysterical myself; for these were women of my own kind, like my mother and sisters, with the fear of death upon them and unwilling to die.