Consciousness came slowly back to Frank Howard. He raised his head, but otherwise lay still, painfully reconstructing the world around him. So tightly was he wedged between a broken ventilator and a skylight coamings that it was only with considerable difficulty that he finally managed to lift himself to a sitting position and stare dizzily around.
He was alone on the deck, which had become much steeper than he remembered it in the gray dawn. Evidently another bulkhead forward had given way, allowing another compartment to become filled with water and causing the bow of the steamer to sink deeper.
In compensation the stern had risen somewhat higher, so that the waves broke against the deck, but no longer rushed violently up it. The sea, too, had gone down, curbed perhaps by the thick man
