Chapter 3

It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not that
the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot out
those who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cart
shoots a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-load
struggling, floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and which
of us is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; for
I saw all this across an impassable gulf of fire.

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard of
the flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to the
lips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out and
up.

Could I jump it there? I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet
across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity.
I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say,
than because my common sense did not.

Some were watching me, it seemed, across this hell. “The bulwarks!” they
screamed. “Walk along the bulwarks!” I held up my hand in token that
I heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding I
noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was
not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a
dead calm.

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared to
move an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the scorched
bulwarks burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up, desperate with the
pain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide to balance me, I walked
those few yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea
and rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by God's grace without
mishap.

There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about
anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more
pregnant than the last. And yet I did think that those who had
encouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed me
alive among them; they were looking at something else already; and this
was what it was.

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had a
bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw
him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harris
appeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for the
deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But
we saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flung
next instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn,
fired without effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Next
instant a smooth black cane was raining blow after blow on the man's
head. He dropped; the blows fell thick and heavy as before. He lay
wriggling; the Portuguese struck and struck until he lay quite still;
then we saw Joaquin Santos kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the
still thing's clothes, as a man might wipe his boots.

Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as I
say, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. This
last had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were at the
starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat.

She lay safely on the water: how we thanked our gods for that! Lower and
lower sank her gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no more care than
the Gadarene swine whose fate we courted. Discipline, order, method,
common care, we brought none of these things with us from our floating
furnace; but we fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the bottom
of the long-boat we fought again.

And yet she held us all! All, that is, but a terror-stricken few, who
lay along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or three more
whom we left fatally hesitating in the forechains: all but the selfish
savages who had been the first to perish in the pinnace, and one
distracted couple who had thrown their children into the kindly ocean,
and jumped in after them out of their torment, locked for ever in each
other's arms.

Yes! I saw more things on that starry night, by that blood-red glare,
than I have told you in their order, and more things than I shall tell
you now. Blind would I gladly be for my few remaining years, if that
night's horrors could be washed from these eyes for ever. I have said so
much, however, that in common candor I must say one thing more. I have
spoken of selfish savages. God help me and forgive me! For by this time
I was one myself.

In the long-boat we cannot have been less than thirty; the exact number
no man will ever know. But we shoved off without mischance; the chief
mate had the tiller; the third mate the boat-hook; and six or eight
oars were at work, in a fashion, as we plunged among the great smooth
sickening mounds and valleys of fathomless ink.

Scarcely were we clear when the foremast dropped down on the fastenings,
dashing the jib-boom into the water with its load of demented human
beings. The mainmast followed by the board before we had doubled our
distance from the wreck. Both trailed to port, where we could not see
them; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary grandeur, her
flapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so that
they were stamped very sharply upon the black add starry sky. But the
whole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and
horror. The fire now filled the entire waist of the vessel, and the
noise of it was as the rumble and roar of a volcano. As for the light,
I declare that it put many a star clean out, and dimmed the radiance
of all the rest, as it flooded the sea for miles around, and a sea of
molten glass reflected it. My gorge rose at the long, low billows-sleek
as black satin--lifting and dipping in this ghastly glare. I preferred
to keep my eyes upon the little ship burning like a tar barrel as the
picture grew. But presently I thanked God aloud: there was the gig
swimming like a beetle over the bloodshot rollers in our wake.

In our unspeakable gladness at being quit of the ship, some minutes
passed before we discovered that the long-boat was slowly filling. The
water was at our ankles before a man of us cried out, so fast were our
eyes to the poor lost _Lady Jermyn_. Then all at once the ghastly fact
dawned upon us; and I think it was the mate himself who burst out crying
like a child. I never ascertained, however, for I had kicked off my
shoes and was busy baling with them. Others were hunting for the leak.
But the mischief was as subtle as it was mortal--as though a plank
had started from end to end. Within and without the waters rose
equally--then lay an instant level with our gunwales--then swamped us,
oh! so slowly, that I thought we were never going to sink. It was
like getting inch by inch into your tub; I can feel it now, creeping,
crawling up my back. “It's coming! O Christ!” muttered one as it came;
to me it was a downright relief to be carried under at last.

But then, thank God, I have always been a strong swimmer. The water was
warm and buoyant, and I came up like a cork, as I knew I should. I shook
the drops from my face, and there were the sweet stars once more; for
many an eye they had gone Out for ever; and there the burning wreck.

A man floundered near me, in a splutter of phosphorescence. I tried to
help him, and in an instant he had me wildly round the neck. In the end
I shook him off, poor devil, to his death. And he was the last I tried
to aid: have I not said already what I was become?

In a little an oar floated my way: I threw my arms across it and gripped
it with my chin as I swam. It relieved me greatly. Up and down I rode
among the oily black hillocks; I was down when there was a sudden flare
as though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few heads bobbing and a
few arms waving frantically around me. At the same instant a terrific
detonation split the ears; and when I rose on the next bald billow,
where the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but a
red-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then left
a blackness through which every star shone with redoubled brilliance.

And now right and left splashed falling missiles; a new source of danger
or of temporary respite; to me, by a merciful Providence, it proved the
latter.

Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash right in front of me. A few
more yards, and my brains had floated with the spume. As it was, the
oar was dashed from under my armpits; in another moment they had found a
more solid resting-place.

It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In this
calm it might float for days. I climbed upon the bars-and the whole cage
rolled over on top of me.

Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hen-coop had righted
itself; so now I climbed up again, but this time very slowly and
gingerly; the balance was undisturbed, and I stretched myself cautiously
along the bars on my stomach. A good idea immediately occurred to me. I
had jumped as a matter of course into the flannels which one naturally
wears in the tropics. To their lightness I already owed my life, but the
common cricket-belt which was part of the costume was the thing to which
I owe it most of all. Loosening this belt a little, as I tucked my toes
tenaciously under the endmost bar, I undid and passed the two ends under
one of the middle bars, fastening the clasp upon the other side. If I
capsized now, well, we might go to the bottom together; otherwise the
hen-coop and I should not part company in a hurry; and I thought, I
felt, that she would float.

Worn out as I was, and comparatively secure for the moment, I will not
say that I slept; but my eyes closed, and every fibre rested, as I rose
and slid with the smooth, long swell. Whether I did indeed hear voices,
curses, cries, I cannot say positively to this day. I only know that I
raised my head and looked sharply all ways but the way I durst not look
for fear of an upset. And, again, I thought I saw first a tiny flame,
and then a tinier glow; and as my head drooped, and my eyes closed
again, I say I thought I smelt tobacco; but this, of course, was my
imagination supplying all the links from one.