The wash found its way below through that jagged gap in the lower deck in crashing water-falls, and every moment, too, the opened valve beside her keel was gushing in fresh gallons to the swamping holds. Any larger sea which swept up now might well settle over her solidly, and launch her with bursted decks on to the sponges and the coral growths a hundred fathoms below.
Some men, in the face of such conditions, would have been mazed, helpless—physically incapable, in the presence of that solitude, of making any necessary effort; for it is one thing to do a desperate matter before the eyes of an applauding crowd, and another when the Devil below is your only appreciative onlooker. It would have been beyond the capabilities of Captain Kettle, for instance. Onslow, however, was the one man in the million to whom the adventure was as meat and drink. If he succeeded, then the profit was his; if he failed, death would be useful to him; and anyway there was the wild excitement of the moment, which was a meal to be enjoyed, and one which nothing could snatch away.
It was in this mood of mind that the man on whose actions the very outer-air existence of the Port Edes depended left his fellows in the chart-house, and raced forward to where the jagged lip of the forehold hatch yawned to the swilling seas. Without lantern, without so much as a look before him, he lowered himself on to the twisted battens below, with the clean water raining on to him from above, and muddy wavelets squirting up from beneath; and then when the steamer gave a heavy send, and the more solid wash from the hold smote him heavily upon the thighs, he loosed his grip, and dived like a stone through the brimming shaft-way of the hatch.
Seconds passed, a minute, two minutes, and still he did not reappear. Three minutes. Then the rounded outlines of something black rolled to the surface, and surged about limply with the swill of the water.
For a while it stayed so; then, swung by a heavier pitch of the steamer, it was washed to the back of a stanchion, where it hung. The slopping water beneath ebbed steadily. The valve in the steamer’s bottom had been closed. Her bilge pumps were running at speed.
During a whole hour Patrick Onslow lodged behind that iron pillar, a mere boneless mass of flesh and clothes; and then the pains of life came into him again with shivers and shudderings. The thin gray light of the dawn was filtering down through the jagged opening above when first the trembling lids slid from his eyeballs; but for still another thirty minutes he was a thing of no wit, breathing truly, but caring naught for all the world contained.
Then a sucking, sobbing noise from the depths of the hold far beneath broke upon his ear, and the languid brain began to work. With an effort he sat up, dizzily holding to the pillar, trying to think where he was, and how ran recent history; and by degrees the details strolled back to him. Before, however, he had gathered all his senses, or a working quantum of strength, he had a visitor in the shape of the donkeyman, who clattered up over the decks with plate-shod boots, and crouched beside the gap above on knees and hands.
“Have you been getting hurt, now?” inquired this new-comer.
“About nine-tenths drowned, I fancy, if that counts. But I’m pretty near all right again now.”