Chapter Forty.
As we lay there in our boat, only a short distance from the burning ship, it seemed to me impossible that it could be long before Jarette and his men discovered us, and came in pursuit. For I felt sure that they would give us the credit of having been beforehand with them, when they saw how the stores had been put under contribution; and knowing how much more easy it would be for them to remove the things from one boat to another than to obtain them from the ship, we should, if overtaken, be absolutely stripped. Something to this effect I whispered to Bob Hampton, but he shook his head.
“Not they, my lad; they’re in too much of a scare. Don’t suppose they’ve got any room in their heads to think about anything just now. They know fast enough that the poor old ship will soon blow up, and what they want to do is to get some more prog, and then row off soon as they can.”
I was going to say more, but I had a warning from the mate to be silent, and I sat there watching the men make a good many tries before they reached the cabin-window; but how they did it at last I couldn’t quite make out, for they were in the shadow, while all around them spread the lurid glare cast by the flames which rose from the burning hold.
These seemed to have reached their greatest height soon after the fire first broke out, and directly the first cask of spirits had burst. Then the fire went steadily on till it began to wane slightly, when another cask would explode, and flames rush up again—those great waves of fire which lapped and leaped, and floated up out of the hold, appearing from where we lay to lick the sails hanging from the fore and main-masts. But these never caught, the golden and bluish waves rising steadily and spreading to starboard and port, and every now and then sending out detached waves to float on the black night air for a moment or two before they died out.
It was very terrible and yet beautiful to see the great bursts of flame gliding up so softly and silently, almost without a sound; there was every mast and stay glistening in the light, and the sails that were hanging from the yards transparent, or half darkened on the main and mizzen-masts, while those on the fore-mast beyond the fire shone like gold.
I wondered how it was that the sides of the deck did not begin to burn, crackling, splitting, and sending up clouds of black smoke dotted with brilliant sparks, as I had once seen at the burning of a coal brig in Falmouth harbour; but they did not, and the utter stillness of the night, in that hot calm, which had on and off lasted for days, had so far saved the masts.
But as I watched, I felt that their turn must come, and that sooner or later I should be watching them turned into pyramids—all brilliant glow—till they fell with a crash, hissing and steaming, into the sea.