The Mont Blanc was still at the jetty. At first it was difficult to make out what had happened. Then dense masses of steam were seen to be issuing from the centre of the ship, and from the whole outside of the saloon spurted white, hissing jets.
The upper deck was the scene of a wild and frenzied panic. A mob of terror-stricken passengers surged to the gangway, fighting, shouting, swarming over each other and everything, at imminent peril of being precipitated into the water. And over and above this chaos, this rout and tumult, there arose a succession of the most appalling screams that ever human ear was condemned to listen to, for they issued from the throats of so many human beings shut up within the death-trap below—so many human beings, for whom all escape was cut off, and who were being literally parboiled alive.
This is what had happened. The steam reservoir had exploded, and the mass of iron covering it had been hurled along the lower deck, sweeping the saloon from end to end, and crashing through the stern of the vessel like the projectile from a piece of ordnance. And then an enormous volume of scalding steam had filled the apartment, and in a moment the light-hearted holiday-seekers, with which it was crowded, wrapped in that hell-blast from which there was no escape, were writhing in the throes of the most horrible, the most agonising of deaths.
Alma, recovering her presence of mind, left her friends, and hurried back to the scene of the catastrophe. But the gathering crowd barred her way; it in its turn being kept back by the arm and voice of Authority. Yet she got near enough to see the outside of the wrecked saloon, the twisted girders supporting the upper deck, the jagged breach in the stern where the iron plate had gone through. She saw the panic-stricken crowd swaying and surging. She saw one scalded wretch rush to the side and leap overboard, in the frenzy of his intolerable agony. What she did not see was him whom she sought. She did not see Philip Orlebar.
Not in the terrified, struggling crowd upon the upper deck did her eyes seek him; even at that moment she knew it was not thus he would be found in the hour of peril and alarm. Her anguished gaze, straining upon the spot where she had last seen him, met with no reward. He was not there. Oh, merciful Heavens! Could he have gone back to his seat in the stern of the boat, to that spot where they had stood together talking for a full hour.
For that spot was now enveloped in a cloud of white steam, which was pouring out through the hole knocked in the end of the saloon by the iron cover of the cistern. Had Philip returned to his seat his back would have rested against that very part of the panelling which was blown away.
It was long before the work of rescue could be begun, long before the fiery breath of that hell-blast had sufficiently abated its fury to admit of search. Still Alma stood there, and as each agonising minute of suspense went by she realised more certainly that there was no hope. She saw body after body—in life or in death—brought away from the fatal ship. She heard the heartrending groans of the sufferers, and the appalling yells of some tortured wretch imploring the boon of death as a termination to his agony. These dreadful sights and sounds which at any other time would well-nigh have killed her with horror, seemed to be something outside her life now. He whom she sought was not among them—not yet.
She pressed forward. The crowd elbowed her backward. The voice of Authority warned her backward. To Authority she appealed.
Now Authority, even in a blue uniform and a sword, may still possess a heart, and Authority as there embodied, was young and presumably susceptible. The white eager face was passingly beautiful—the piteous glance and appealing voice correspondingly entrancing. Authority’s heart melted. In the result the crowd elbowed her backward no more.
“Mademoiselle had a friend on board? A lady? No? A gentleman—an English gentleman? Good. He should be sought for.”