The Man Who Laughs Part I, Book the Second, Chapter XVII - The Last Resource

In which a vessel grievously wounded by an unseen leak drifts helplessly upon a becalmed sea, its crew struggling vainly against the slow certainty of their doom with the desperate shedding of all burden. The silent and inexorable descent into the watery abyss is marked not by tempestuous fury, but by a dreadful and implacable calm that seals their fate.