And everybody remembered that the ship had 164,000 cases of kerosene stowed in her hold, realized that they were in the midst of the stormiest, remotest ocean in the world, afloat upon a volcano due to burst, and quailed. No blame to any of them. From the outside we may pass judgment upon what men do in such crises, but we should be chary of so doing: it is an awful test of manhood.
The mate rose to the occasion. “Call all hands!” he cried, “and pass the hose along.” Then he sought the skipper and reported to him, at the same time reminding him of the state of the boats. The skipper received the news in the same curious, careless way that he had treated everything of late, but to the mate’s remark about the boats he made no reply whatever. This angered the mate, who repeated the remark in a raised tone and asked for orders concerning them. In a strange, unnatural voice the captain replied that he could do what he liked, it would not matter. Of what use were boats here, and he waved his hand around over the desperate sea. For a moment the mate hesitated, then shouting—“I can’t waste time with you,” he rushed forrard, intending to give orders to have the boats cleared, when he saw C. B. and two hands working away at them, the rest being busy at the forehatch with a monkey pump.
It was a sad business but heroic in the extreme, that little group of men engaged in the hopeless task of trying to subdue the flames below among that terrible cargo, and aft one of their number steadily pursuing his task of steering the doomed ship on her course through the darkness. Suddenly the mate roared—
“Drop those buckets and get the boats clear, what’s the use of wasting work?” and, obedient to his cry, all hands rushed to the boats, realizing in a dazed sort of way what the neglect of this slender chance of life might mean. But C. B. and his two companions had toiled at the biggest boat on the skids to good advantage, for they already had her clear, her gear all sorted out and water put in her.
Then C. B., hurriedly whispering to his helpers to get such food as they could out of the cabin, caught up his wife and placed her in the stern of the boat. Next he settled his father-in-law by her side and bade them remain where they were. They obeyed him implicitly, for at that moment he seemed to them to be gifted with amazing power and foresight. But he was at his wits’ end because the ship was still running before the gale like a hunted thing, and the very act of heaving her to, that is, bringing her round to the wind and stopping her way, was fraught with the utmost danger, yet it had to be done if the boats were to be launched. And the captain made no sign.
At last the mate, able to bear it no longer, rushed off to where the captain stood by the helmsman, and shouted so as to be heard above the roar of the gale—
“We’ve only moments left; the fire may burst up through all hatches at once at any time now.”
“All right,” said the skipper wearily, as if the matter did not concern him very much.
“All, all hands to shorten sail.” He had hardly uttered the words when with a roar that dumbed the gale a column of fire burst upwards from the fore hatch as wide as that opening and as high as the topsail yards. The man at the wheel, paralysed at the sight, let the spokes slip from his nerveless grasp, and the vessel gave a tremendous sheer up into the wind. She was of course carrying a press of canvas, and the weight of it caught aback, heeled her over, until she was on her beam ends. One gigantic sea towered above her like a wall, then swept down and tore everything movable from her decks over the lee side which was now under water.