Sail Ho! A Boy at Sea

by George Manville Fenn

I said in an instant, for I was talking to Walters one moment, and the next I was fighting the fire over again, and seeing now all kinds of horrible glowing-eyed serpents and dragons, which kept on raising their heads and breathing out flames. And as they reared their heads, they glared at me with their glowing eyeballs, and lifted themselves higher, to try and lick with their fiery tongues the woodwork of the ship.

It was all wonderfully plain, and the worry and trouble were terrible. I held the nozzle, of the hose, and knew that unless I drove them back with a strong jet of water they would destroy the ship at once; but the tube was empty, the pump did not clank, and the hissing creatures rose higher and higher, till they were about to scorch me, when I started into wakefulness, and found that I was lying on my back, bathed in perspiration, and all was perfectly still.

I soon changed my position, and dropped off to sleep again—a calm, restful sleep for a time; but the old trouble returned: there I was standing at the edge of that great steaming gap in the deck, with the fiery serpents darting here and there and dancing up and down. Then they began to make darts at the woodwork, and one greater than all the rest reared itself up to try and reach the main-mast, but sank back again. Then it reared itself up and tried once more, this time reaching higher and higher, till it disappeared in the grey smoke; and directly after I saw that it had reached the mast, and was creeping up it, in one long undulating streak of golden and ruddy fire, which would soon reach the mast-head, if I did not drive it down with the jet of water.

I raised the copper branch, and directed it straight at the fiery monster, but the pump still did not clank, and no water flowed. Instead thereof came a jet of steam—not the visible grey vapour which is really the water in tiny vesicles, but a jet of invisible steam which rushed out of the breach with a shrill whistling sound, and again I awoke with a start to fancy that I was yet dreaming, for the sharp whistling still rang in my ears.

Then I knew what it was—the signal of danger given by Mr Denning or his sister, and, hurrying out of the cabin, I crossed the saloon, and ran out and upon deck to where they were.

“A boat?—the mutineers?” I panted.

“No,” said Miss Denning, excitedly. “The fire has broken out again!”

At the same moment I found that the alarm had been heard forward, for the men were tumbling up from the forecastle, and Bob Hampton’s voice thundered out—

“Ahoy, there! man the pumps. She’s going it again.”

For, on reaching the gap in the deck where the hissing had recommenced, the steam which we had left steadily rising when we went to lie down, then looking of a blackish grey, now appeared luminous, as if some great light were playing about beyond it.