“Ahoy!” there came a voice from beyond the great black gulf in the centre of the schooner, which now began to blaze.
“Who’s that? Ahoy!” shouted Dutch. “Captain Studwick?”
“Right! Who’s with you there?”
“Oakum, Rasp, and one of the men,” cried Dutch. “Who’s with you?”
“I think all,” replied the captain, shouting across the gulf.
“Is my wife—Miss Studwick—safe?” faltered Dutch; and on receiving a reply in the affirmative, he muttered a prayer of thankfulness.
The question then arose—was the schooner sinking?
“I think not,” shouted the captain, for a disposition was shown to get out the boats. “If she was sinking, she would not begin to blaze like that down in the hold. It seems to me that the explosion struck upwards, and that she is sound below—for the present.”
And so it proved; for the dynamite had ripped up the deck and snapped off the mainmast as if it had been the stem of a flower, and it now lay alongside, with such of its ropes as were out of water blazing.
Not a moment was to be lost, and buckets being brought into requisition, the flames were attacked, for portions of the wreck below began now to blaze fiercely. One of the pumps, too, was set to work, and for long hours nothing was heard but the hissing of the flames as they were attacked by the water; but all that could be done was to keep them from increasing, and when at last the morning broke, it was to show two groups, one forward, the other astern, sullenly drawing buckets of water and dashing them into a hissing gulf of fire in the centre of the schooner, from which rose a column of black smoke to spread overhead and form a cloud like a funeral pall for the unlucky ship.