The Captain stared through his binoculars.
"Yes," he said calmly; "you're right. They'll be grilled alive if her head falls away from the wind. Starboard ten, Quartermaster."
Obedient to her helm, the Destroyer closed that blinding hell-glare, and presently to the naked eye a score of human figures were visible, huddled into the eyes of the ship. The Lieutenant on the Destroyer's bridge picked up a megaphone and bawled through it.
"Why don't they jump, the damned fools?" he demanded angrily. "They must have seen us. They know we'll pick them up." The Destroyer came closer, plunging and rolling in the seaway. The figures on the bridge shielded their faces from the scorching heat as every eye watched the hungry flames licking their way forward along the oiler's forecastle. Her foremast fell with a crash, sending up a great column of fire into the outraged sky. By its glare the faces of the huddled figures were plainly visible: beardless, with high cheek-bones, distorted with terror like the masks of trapped animals.
"God!" ejaculated the First Lieutenant. "Chinks! They're all Chinese! No wonder they wouldn't jump! Can't swim!"
The Captain thrust him towards the ladder. "Stand by with fenders the port side. Get the hand-pumps going. I'll run her alongside."
"Gawd 'elp us!" muttered the Gunner, and as he spoke the burning ship yawed suddenly and came bearing down on them.
From first to last it was less than five minutes' work. With paint blistered and scorched clothing, rails and davits bent, with cold fear in their hearts and a sense of duty that mastered all, that prodigy of seamanship was accomplished. Twenty-four jabbering Chinese firemen and a dazed Scotch mate flopped down pell-mell on to the Destroyer's upper deck, and received the gift of life at the hands of a young man in a singed duffle coat, who said nothing, whose breath came and went rather fast through dilated nostrils.
"Twenty-five," reported the First Lieutenant when he had mustered the rescued and the Destroyer was racing landward, "and twenty-four of 'em Chinks. You risked your ship for a couple of dozen yellow-bellies!"
"Maybe I did," replied his Captain. Dawn was paling the Eastern sky, and he loosened the duffle coat about his throat. "Maybe I did. I ain't the Hohangho."