A Middy of the Slave Squadron Part 10

I glanced at the instrument, which, together with a tell-tale compa.s.s, swung from the skylight transoms, and saw that the mercury had sunk in the tube to the extent of nearly an inch since the last setting of the vernier; and, as it was our custom in the Slave Squadron at that time to set the instrument at 8 o'clock a.m. and 8 o'clock p.m., it meant that the mercury had fallen to that extent during the night! What was about to happen? I had observed nothing portentous in the aspect of the weather, while on deck, unless, indeed, the softening away of the trade- wind and the hazy condition of the atmosphere might be regarded as portents. Yet that could hardly be, for I had observed the same phenomena before, yet nothing particular had come of it. I decided to have a talk with Tasker, the gunner's mate, and get his views on the matter; he was a man of very considerable experience, having been a sailor before I was born; I therefore at once entered my cabin, and proceeded to dress; after which I returned to the deck, where Tasker was officer of the watch. I found him sitting aft on the stern grating, replacing his socks and shoes, which he had removed from his feet at four bells in order to take a leading part in the matutinal ceremony of was.h.i.+ng decks. I had already seen him a little earlier that morning, and exchanged greetings with him; I therefore at once, and without any circ.u.mlocution, plunged into the subject by asking:

"What do you think of the look of the weather, Mr Tasker; is there anything unusual about it, in your opinion?"

Tasker rose to his feet and cast a prolonged glance at the sky before replying. Then he said slowly:

"I can't say as I sees anything much out of the common about it, so far, Mr Fortescue. The wind's dropped a bit more than's quite usual, certainly; but I don't know as there's very mich in that. And then there's this here thickness o' the hatmosphere--well, that may or may not mean somethin', but I don't see anything alarmin' about it just yet.

Why d'ye ask the question, sir? Is the gla.s.s droppin' at all?"

"It has dropped nearly an inch since it was set last night," I answered.

"Phew! Nearly an inch since eight bells last night!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the old salt, with an air of concern. "That means, sir, that it have fallen that little lot since midnight; for I looked at it then, when Mr Keene relieved me, and it hadn't dropped nothin' then."

"Then what is going to happen?" I demanded. "Are we going to have a hurricane?"

"I should say yes, Mr Fortescue, most decidedly," answered Tasker.

"And yet," he continued, again carefully scanning the sky, "I must confess I don't see nothin' very alarmin' up there at present. I s'pose the mercury bag haven't sprung a leak, by no chance, have it? This here sudden drop reminds me of a yarn a s.h.i.+pmate of mine once told me about a scare he had when he was in the sloop _Pyramus_ in the Indian Ocean, outward bound to the China station. The scare started with a sudden fall of the barometer, just as it might be in this here present case, and it went on droppin' until the skipper began to think he was booked for the biggest blow as ever come away out o' the 'eavens. He started by sendin' down royal and t'gallan' yards and housin' the t'gallan'

masts. Then, as the mercury still went on droppin', he shortened sail to close-reefed fore and main taups'ls, sent the t'gallan' masts down on deck, and housed the topmasts. While this work was goin' on the mercury kept fallin' until it sank out o' sight altogether; and the skipper had actually given the order to furl the taups'ls and send the yards and masts down when the cabin steward happened to make the discovery that the mercury bag had busted and the mercury from the barometer was rollin' in little b.a.l.l.s all over the cabin floor! My mate told me that the time in which they got that there _Pyramus_ ataunto again, that day, and the royals upon her, was never a'terwards beaten!"

I could not avoid a good hearty laugh at this quaint story of a phenomenal fall of the mercury in a barometer; for it was easy to conjure up a picture of the rapidly growing alarm and dismay of the captain as he watched the steady and speedy shrinkage of the metallic column, and of the feverish anxiety and haste with which he would proceed with his preparations to meet the swoop of the supposedly approaching typhoon, as also of his disgust at the discovery that all his alarm and anxiety had been brought about by the unsuspected leakage of a leather bag! But the story served as a hint to me; what had happened once might happen again; and I forthwith retired to the cabin and carefully examined our own instrument to discover whether, haply, such an accident had occurred in our case. But no, the bag into which the base of the gla.s.s tube was plunged was perfectly sound and intact; and, meanwhile, during my brief colloquy with Tasker a further fall of a full tenth had occurred. I lost no time in returning to the deck.

"The scare is quite genuine this time, Mr Tasker," I said; "there is no leakage in our mercury bag to account for the heavy drop; moreover, the drop has increased by a full tenth. Therefore, although the present aspect of the weather may not be precisely alarming, we will proceed to snug down at once, if you please, in view of the fact that the crew we carry is not precisely what might be called efficient, and will probably take an unconscionably long time over the work."

"Ay, ay, sir," answered Tasker. "I expect the mercury ain't droppin'

exactly for nothin', therefore, as you says, we'd better be makin' ready for what's in store for us." Then, facing forward, he gave the order:

"Clew up your royal and t'garns'l, furl 'em, and then get the yards down on deck. Hurry, you scallywags; the more work you does now, the more time for play will you have a'ter breakfast."

The "snugging down" process occupied us until nearly four bells of the forenoon watch; but when at length it was completed we felt that we were prepared to face anything, our royal and topgallant-mast and all our yards being down on deck, the fore and main-topmasts and the jib-boom housed, the great mainsail snugly stowed and the heavy boom securely supported in a strong crutch, and the s.h.i.+p under fore and main storm staysails only.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE END OF THE DOLPHIN.

By the time that all this had been accomplished, the wind had fallen away to a dead calm, and the only sounds audible were the creaking and groaning of the s.h.i.+p's timbers, the loud rattle of the cabin doors below upon their hooks, the wash of the sea alongside and under the counter, the constant irritating _jerk-jerk_ of the tiller chains, and the violent rustle and slatting of the staysails, as the _Dolphin_ rolled her channels under in the long, oily swell that was now running. But, so far as the aspect of the sky was concerned, there was no more sign of the threatened storm than there had been when I first went on deck that morning--except that, maybe, the haze had thickened somewhat, rendering our horizon still more circ.u.mscribed, and the heat had increased to such an extent that, as Keene had remarked, one would gladly have gone overboard to escape it but for the sharks, several of which were cruising round us, while three monsters persistently hung under our counter in the shadow of the s.h.i.+p's hull, hungrily ogling those of us who chanced to lean over the taffrail to get a glimpse of them. Yet, when, for want of something better to do, Jack Keene and I got a shark hook and, baiting it with a highly flavoured piece of pork out of the harness cask, sought to inveigle one of the monsters into swallowing it, they disdained to even so much as look at it, merely glancing upward at us, when we deftly dropped the bait upon one of their broad, shovel noses, as though to say:

"No, no, my hearties! No rancid pork for us, thank you, when, by exercising a little patience, we may, with luck, get a chance to learn what one of you jokers tastes like." The enervating effect of the heat seemed to be as strongly revealed in them as it was in ourselves.

The sun still flamed in the heavens when, shortly before noon, Jack and I brought our s.e.xtants on deck with the object of measuring his meridian alt.i.tude above the horizon; but we were only able to obtain a very approximate and wholly useless result, for, when we came to try, we found that the sun appeared in our instruments merely as a shapeless glare of light, while the horizon was wholly indistinguishable. Then, by imperceptible degrees, the sun, like the horizon, became obliterated, and the atmosphere stealthily darkened, as though a continuous succession of curtains of grey gauze were being interposed between us and the sky. Meanwhile the barometer was still persistently declining, although not quite so rapidly as during the early hours of the morning.

It was about six bells in the afternoon watch when, with a sudden darkening of the sky, that came upon us like the gloom of night, it began to rain--a regular tropical deluge, sluicing down upon us in sheets, as though the bottom of a cloud had dropped out; and within less than a minute our decks were more than ankle-deep in warm fresh water, and our scuppers were running full. The downpour lasted for perhaps a minute and a half, and then ceased as abruptly as though a tap had been turned off, and we heard the shower pa.s.sing away to the northward of us, leaving us with streaming decks and dripping canvas and rigging. But, although the rain had come and gone again in the s.p.a.ce of a couple of minutes, the darkness intensified rather than otherwise, and presently we heard a muttering of distant thunder away down in the southern quarter, followed, after a while, by a further dash of rain, lasting for a few seconds only.

Then, all in a moment, and without any further warning, the blackness overhead was riven by the most appallingly vivid flash of lightning that I had ever seen, accompanied--not followed--by a crash of thunder that temporarily deafened all hands of us and caused the s.h.i.+p to quiver and tremble from stem to stern. Then, while we were all standing agape, our ears deafened by the thunder and our eyes blinded by the glare of the lightning, a fierce gust of hot wind swept over us, filling our two staysails with a report like that of a cannon and laying the s.h.i.+p over to her sheer-strake. Tasker, who was again officer of the watch, at once sprang to the wheel and a.s.sisted the helmsman to put it hard up; but almost before the s.h.i.+p had begun to gather way the first fierceness of the gust had pa.s.sed, leaving us little more than a fresh breeze. I therefore went aft and shouted to them--for they were as deaf as I was-- to bring the vessel up to her course again, when we began to move through the water at a speed of some five knots.

That first terrible flash of lightning and crash of thunder was, however, only the beginning of the most awful electric storm that it has ever been my fate to witness, the sky, now black as night, being rent in half a dozen different directions at once by fierce, baleful flashes, green, blue, crimson, and sun-bright, while the bombarding of the thunder was absolutely terrifying, even to us who were by this time growing quite accustomed to tropical storms. With it there came frequent short, sharp, intermittent bursts of rain that swept across our decks, stinging the exposed skin like shot, and enshrouding everything beyond a couple of fathoms away in impenetrable obscurity. Now, too, there came, at irregular but quickly recurring intervals, savage gusts of wind that smote the s.h.i.+p as though she had been but a child's toy, heeling her down until her lee rail was awash, and holding her thus for two or three minutes at a time, then easing up for a short s.p.a.ce, the "easing up" intervals, however, steadily growing more abbreviated, while the gusts that invariably followed them rapidly grew in intensity and fury, until after the pa.s.sage of one that had pinned us down for three or four minutes, with our lee sheer-poles buried in the smother, I thought that the time had arrived to heave-to, and gave the order to do so. Nor was I any too soon; for the sea was rapidly rising, and a quarter of an hour later we probably could not have accomplished the feat without having had our decks swept. The gale now rapidly increased in intensity, the gusts of wind ever growing stronger and more furious, and succeeding each other more rapidly, until at length the intervals between them became so brief as to be practically imperceptible, the strength of the wind now being equal to that of a heavy gale, and momentarily growing stronger as gust after gust swooped down upon us.

The blinding, drenching showers that occasionally swept us were no longer composed of fresh water only, for there was a strong mingling of salt-water in them that was none other than the tops of the waves, torn off by the terrific blasts of wind and hurled along horizontally in the form of vast sheets of spray. The sea, meanwhile, was rising with astounding rapidity, taking into consideration the fact that, as just stated, the height of the combers was greatly reduced by the enormous volumes of water that were scooped up from the ocean's surface by the fury of the wind; moreover the sea was short, steep, and irregular, much more nearly resembling the breakers on a coast in shallow water, than the long, regular, majestically moving seas of the open ocean. The _Dolphin_, therefore, despite her beautiful model and the reduction of her tophamper, was beginning to make exceedingly bad weather of it, frequently burying herself to her foremast, and careening so heavily that during some of her lee rolls it was impossible to maintain one's footing on deck except by holding on to something.

At length, about four bells in the first watch, the lightning, which had hitherto almost continuously illuminated the atmosphere, suddenly ceased altogether, and the night grew intensely dark, the only objects remaining visible being the faintly phosph.o.r.escent heads of the seas, flas.h.i.+ng into view and gleaming ghostly for a moment before they were torn into spray by the violence of the wind and whirled away through the air to leeward. Then, with almost equal suddenness, there came a positively startling lull in the strength of the wind, and the s.h.i.+p-- which had for some hours been laying over to it so steeply that movement about her decks was only to be achieved with great circ.u.mspection and by patiently awaiting the arrival of one's opportunity--suddenly rose almost to an even keel. I seized the chance thus afforded me to claw my way to the skylight and glance through it at the barometer, illuminated by the wildly swaying lamp which the steward had lighted when darkness fell, but, to my intense disappointment, the mercury, which had steadily been shrinking all day, exhibited a further drop since the index had been set at eight o'clock that evening.

"We have not yet seen the worst of it," I shouted to Tasker, who, although it was now his watch below, had elected to remain on deck and bear me company. "The gla.s.s is still going down."

"I'm very sorry to hear it, Mr Fortescue," he answered. "I don't like the look of things at all. The s.h.i.+p has been most terrible uneasy for several hours now, and I'm afraid we shall find that she's been strainin' badly. It might not be amiss to sound the well; and if, as I fear, we find that she's been takin' water in through her seams, I'd advise--"

His further speech was cut short by a terrific blast of wind that swooped down upon us like a howling, screaming fiend, without a moment's warning. So violent was it that Tasker and I were both swept off our feet and dashed to the deck, where I brought up against the cabin companion with a crash that all but knocked the senses out of me, while the gunner's mate disappeared in the direction of the lee scuppers. The yelling and screaming of the wind was absolutely appalling, the volume of sound being such that nothing else could be heard above it; and in the midst of the din I became vaguely conscious that the s.h.i.+p was going over until she lay upon her beam ends, with her deck almost perpendicular, and the water up to the level of her hatchways.

For a few seconds I lay where I was, on the upturned side of the companion, listening to the water pouring into the cabin with every lee roll of the s.h.i.+p, and endeavouring to pull together my scattered faculties; then, dimly realising that something must be done to relieve the s.h.i.+p if we would not have her founder beneath us, I scrambled to my feet and, seizing a rope's end that came las.h.i.+ng about me, dragged myself up to the weather rail, clinging to which I slowly and painfully worked my way forward, shouting for the carpenter as I did so. At length, arrived at the fore rigging, I came upon a small group of men who had somehow contrived to climb up to windward and out upon the s.h.i.+p's upturned side, where they were now desperately hacking away with their knives at the lanyards of the weather fore rigging.

"That's right, lads!" I exclaimed, whipping out my own knife and lending a hand; "we must cut away the masts and get the s.h.i.+p upright again, or she will go down under us. Where is the carpenter? Let him bring along his axe. He will do more good in one minute than we can in ten."

"I'm afraid, sir, as Chips has gone overboard with some more when the s.h.i.+p was hove down. But I'll see if I can get into the fo'c's'le and lay my hand upon his axe," answered one of the men.

"Do so by all means," I returned; "and be quick about it. I would go myself, but you will know better than I where to find the axe; and even moments are precious just now."

They were, indeed; for it was easy to tell, by the feel of the s.h.i.+p, that she was becoming waterlogged, and every gallon of water that now poured into her seriously decreased our chances of saving her. But it was bad news to learn that the carpenter, "with some more" men, had been lost overboard when the s.h.i.+p was thrown upon her beam-ends; yet, when I came to recall the suddenness of the event, the surprising thing was that any of us had survived it. This reminded me of Tasker, and set me wondering whether he had been as fortunate as myself, or whether that last awful lurch had been as fatal to him as it had been to some others among us.

Meanwhile we continued to hack away with our knives at the lanyards, and presently, after what appeared to have been a terribly protracted interval, but which was probably not more than a couple of minutes, the last lanyard parted with a tw.a.n.g, and the next instant, with a crash heard even through the terrific hubbub of the gale, the foremast snapped close off by the deck and plunged, with all attached, into the boil to leeward. Then we breathlessly waited, hoping that, thus relieved, the s.h.i.+p would recover herself, and for a moment it almost seemed that she would do so; but just at the critical moment the gale swooped down heavier than ever, and at the same instant an extra heavy sea struck her, and down she lay again, as though too tired to struggle further.

"It is no good, men," I cried, "she won't rise. Lay aft, and cut away the mainmast also. It is our only chance!" And, therewith, we all crawled along the s.h.i.+p's side--escaping being washed off or blown overboard only by a series of miracles, as it seemed to me--until we arrived at the main chains, where we had something to cling to, and where the channel-piece partially sheltered us. Here we at once got to work with all our energy upon the weather main lanyards, and, the man with the axe presently joining us, in a few minutes the mainmast also went over the side.

"Now, inboard with you, men, as smart as you like," I cried. "If she is going to rise at all she may do so quite suddenly, in which case we run the risk of being hove overboard if we remain here."

We all scrambled in on deck, steadying ourselves by such of the running rigging as we could lay hold of; and we had scarcely done so when the hull partially recovered its upright position, not quite so suddenly as I had expected, yet with a quick righting movement that left our decks knee-deep in water. I sprang to the companion and strove to close the burst-open doors and so prevent any further influx of water to the cabin; but the heavy was.h.i.+ng sounds that came up from below told me that my efforts were already too late to be of any service, for the cabin seemed to be flooded to almost half the height of the companion ladder, and the sluggish motions of the s.h.i.+p told me eloquently enough that she was perilously near to a foundering condition. I therefore rallied the men and bade them get to work at the pumps forthwith; and it was then that I discovered, to my horror, that, of our complement of sixty, we had lost no fewer than fourteen, including my messmate, poor Jack Keene, and Tasker, the gunner's mate, all of whom must have gone overboard when the vessel was thrown down on her beam-ends! It was a most deplorable affair, and I was especially grieved at the loss of my light-hearted chum; but that was not the moment for indulgence in useless lamentation, and I busied myself in doing what might be possible to provide for the safety of the s.h.i.+p.

First of all I got a strong gang to work at the pumps in two relays, each taking a spell of ten minutes pumping, followed by an equal length of time for rest. When I had fairly started these, and saw the water gus.h.i.+ng in a clear stream from the spouts of both pumps, I set the rest to work cutting away all the rigging which still held the wreckage of the masts attached to the hull, leaving the fore and fore-topmast stays untouched, my intention being that the drift of the hull should bring the wreckage under the bows, where, being held fast by the stays, it should form a sort of floating anchor to which the s.h.i.+p should ride head to wind and sea. Thus we might hope that she would no longer s.h.i.+p water in such quant.i.ties as to threaten her safety. After nearly an hour's hard labour we succeeded, during which it appeared to me that the men were making little or no impression upon the amount of water in the hold. But, as I had hoped, when once we had brought the hull head to wind she no longer s.h.i.+pped water in any very alarming quant.i.ties; and after watching her carefully for some minutes I came to the conclusion that we might safely venture to open the after hatchway and supplement the efforts of those at the pumps by baling with buckets.

Before starting the pumps I had taken the precaution of having the well sounded, with the result that we had discovered the depth of water in the s.h.i.+p's interior to be three feet ten inches, as nearly as could be ascertained; but the violent motions of the hull had rendered anything like really accurate sounding an impossibility, and the same cause now precluded us from ascertaining with certainty whether the leak was gaining upon the pumps or _vice-versa_. One thing was perfectly certain, and that was that if the pumps were gaining upon the leak at all, it was but slowly. If that should prove to be the case, it would mean that there was something the matter more serious than the mere straining of the s.h.i.+p; possibly a b.u.t.t or a hood-end had been started.

It was by this time close upon midnight, and there were times when I almost succeeded in persuading myself that it was not blowing quite so hard as it had been, although the difference--if difference there were-- was certainly not very strongly marked; the sea, however, still continued to rise, and was now running higher than I had ever before seen it. Yet the poor, sorely battered _Dolphin_ rode it reasonably well, all things considered; although there were times when the water in her interior, happening to become concentrated in the fore part of her just as she should be rising to a sea, pinned her down by the head to a dangerous extent, causing the sea to come in, green, unbroken, and like a miniature mountain, over her bows. When this threatened to occur it became necessary to watch her narrowly, and if the danger seemed to be imminent we hurriedly replaced the after hatches, otherwise we should very quickly have been swamped.

When the pumping gangs had been at work for about an hour they complained of exhaustion, and I accordingly relieved them to the extent of setting them to work with the buckets and putting two fresh gangs at the pumps; yet, although these men worked pretty energetically, it soon became evident that we were not gaining anything upon the leak, and as time pa.s.sed on it became exceedingly doubtful whether the leak were not rather gaining upon us. Moreover, as the sea continued to rise the vessel's movements became more laboured, and she again began to take the water aboard in such dangerous quant.i.ties that at length we were reluctantly compelled to abandon our baling operations, and close the hatches to prevent the heavy seas from reaching her interior.

In this fas.h.i.+on the seemingly endless night at length wore itself away and the lowering dawn came, disclosing to us the true seriousness of our condition. There we were, aweary, hollow-eyed, haggard-looking little band, sodden to the very bones of us with long hours of exposure to the pitiless buffeting of rain and sea, our flesh salt-encrusted, our eyes bloodshot, our hands raw and bleeding with the severe and protracted work at the pumps, adrift in mid-ocean upon a mastless, sorely battered, and badly leaking hulk, with her ballast s.h.i.+fted and a heavy list, tossed helplessly upon a furiously raging sea that seemed instinct with a relentless determination to overwhelm us, toiling and fighting doggedly against the untiring elements, in the hope that, perchance, if our strength held out, we might keep the now crazy, straining, and complaining fabric beneath us afloat long enough to afford us some chance of saving our lives. Yet the hope was, after all, but a slender one; for with the coming of daylight we were able to see that our plight was very considerably worse than we had dreamed it to be during the hours of darkness; for _then_ we had believed that the loss of our masts and the springing of a somewhat serious leak represented the sum total of our misfortunes; while _now_ we saw, to our unspeakable dismay, that, with the solitary exception of the longboat, the whole of our boats were so badly damaged as to be altogether beyond our ability to repair; of two of them, indeed, nothing save the stem and stern remained dangling forlornly from the davit tackles. But that, bad though it was, was not the worst; for it was no longer possible for us to blind ourselves to the fact that the leak was gaining upon us inexorably, and that, even though we should continue to toil with unabated energy, we could not keep the s.h.i.+p afloat longer than a few hours more, at the utmost.

And then what were we to do? The longboat, fine boat though she was, when stocked with even a meagre supply of provisions and water, would not accommodate more than twenty-five men, and I gravely doubted whether she would live ten minutes in such a sea as was then running, with half that number in her. Still, with the exception of such a raft as we might be able to put together, she was all that we had, and half an hour of daylight sufficed to show me that no time must be lost in making preparations to quit the slowly foundering s.h.i.+p. Yet it would not do for us to leave the pumps for a moment; one gang must, at all costs, be kept hard at work pumping out as much as possible of the water that was pouring in through the open seams, otherwise the leak would gain upon us so rapidly that the s.h.i.+p would settle from under us long before we were ready to face such a catastrophe. I therefore at once set about the formulating of my plans and carrying them into effect. First of all, while one gang kept the pump-brakes clanking and the clear water spouting out upon our streaming deck, I got another gang to work at launching the guns overboard as the roll of the s.h.i.+p permitted--and this, I was glad to see, eased the poor labouring craft quite perceptibly. This done, all hands, except those at the pumps, went to breakfast, the meal consisting of hot coffee sweetened with mola.s.ses, and s.h.i.+p's biscuit, more or less sodden with salt-water--for with the coming of daylight and the preparation of breakfast the unwelcome discovery had been made that the salt-water had got at the provisions and gone far toward spoiling them. Then, as soon as the first gang had finished breakfast, they relieved those at the pumps, who in their turn took breakfast and next proceeded to clear away the longboat and prepare her for launching, by providing her with a proper supply of oars and thole-pins, her rudder and tiller, masts and sails, and then carefully stowing her stock of water and provisions. But when all this was done it was still blowing too hard--although the worst of the gale seemed to be over--and the sea was altogether too rough to allow of our attempting to launch her. We therefore next got to work upon a raft, first of all las.h.i.+ng all our spare spars together as a sort of foundation, and then, upon the top of this, las.h.i.+ng the hen-coops, gratings, a few planks that the carpenter had stowed away down below, and, finally, some lengths of bulwark that we cut away for the purpose. This raft, when completed, was a fairly roomy affair, affording s.p.a.ce enough to stow away some thirty people, together with a good supply of provisions and water, which we now proceeded to get up from below and stow; the cook, meanwhile, industriously boiling as much beef and pork as he could crowd into his coppers. Then we knocked off and piped to dinner; and while we were getting this--probably the last meal of which we should ever partake aboard the poor old _Dolphin_--our hearts were gladdened by a sudden burst of suns.h.i.+ne breaking through the clouds, and half an hour later the sky to windward was clear, the sun was s.h.i.+ning brilliantly and pouring his welcome warmth upon our chilled bodies and saturated clothing, while the gale had broken and was fast moderating, having already declined to the strength of a double-reefed topsail breeze. The sea, too, was no longer raging like a boiling cauldron; yet, even so, it was still too heavy to justify us in attempting to launch either the longboat or the raft.

And now, at the very moment when it was most necessary that the crew should preserve an orderly and obedient disposition, they suddenly broke into open mutiny, flatly refusing to work any longer at the pumps; declaring that the s.h.i.+p was good for at least another hour, and that before that had pa.s.sed we should all be safely away from her; that there was no sense in wanting to keep the s.h.i.+p afloat longer than there was any absolute need for; and that the time had now arrived when they must begin to think of saving their own personal belongings. When I attempted to remonstrate with them and point out the folly of their behaviour they became virulently abusive, and declared that if I wanted the pumps kept going I might keep them going myself--and this although I had already done considerably more than my fair share of that back- breaking labour. Therewith they abandoned the pumps and betook themselves forward to the forecastle, from which there shortly afterward came floating to my horrified ears loud peals of maudlin laughter, mingled with s.n.a.t.c.hes of ribald songs and coa.r.s.e jests, whereby I came to know, all too late, that, while getting up the provisions from below, some of them must have broken into the spirit-room and possessed themselves of a very considerable supply of rum, upon which they were now fast drinking themselves into a condition of reckless indifference to the awful danger that threatened them. Anything, I thought, was better than this; therefore, having first gone down below and brought up the chronometer, my s.e.xtant, and a chart of the Atlantic, and stowed the whole carefully in the stern-sheets of the longboat, loaded my pistols, and girded my sword to my side, I went forward to the fore-scuttle and, putting my head into it, shouted in as cheery a tone as I could summon:

"Now then, lads, tumble up on deck, all hands of you. We have still a great deal to do, and very little time to do it in; therefore let us see about getting the longboat into the water, and the raft over the side.

There will be time enough to rest when we are safe away from the wreck."

"All ri', schipper, don' you worry," bawled a great hulking Dutchman in reply. "Dere's blendy of dime yet; and ve're nod going do move undil ve've vinished dhis grog."

Then another--an American this time--took up the tale, shouting, "Go 'way, little man, go 'way! Wha' d'you mean, anyway, by comin' here and disturbin' gen'lemen when they're busy? Come in and have a drink with us, youngster, just to show that you're not stuck up. I guess we're all equals in this dandy little barkie; yes, sirree! I'm a free-born 'Murican, I am, an' just as good as you or any other blamed Britisher, and don' you forget it. So, if you won' come in an' have a drink, take your ugly-lookin' mug out o' the daylight, d'ye hear?"

To emphasise this polite request the man seized a heavy sea boot from the forecastle deck and hove it at me, with so poor an aim that instead of hitting me he dashed it into the face of an Englishman who happened at the moment to be drinking rum out of a pannikin. The blow dashed the pannikin out of the man's hand, and splashed the fiery spirit all over his face and into his eyes; and the next instant, with a low, fierce growl of concentrated ferocity, he sprang to his feet and struck the free-born 'Murican a smas.h.i.+ng blow under the chin that sent him sprawling.

"You have no time to waste in fighting, lads," I cried, for I felt that the s.h.i.+p was fast settling under our feet. But my voice was completely drowned in the babel of angry yells that instantly arose, for it appeared that the men were, after their own fas.h.i.+on, rivals for leaders.h.i.+p in the forecastle, and each man had his own partisans, every one of whom instantly took up the quarrel of his own favourite, and in another moment the whole of them were at each others' throats, like so many quarrelsome dogs.