I ran up just in time to see the cat shin hand over hand up the main-top gallant mast, and seat himself on the very truck, in the exact spot he had occupied in his first adventure on board, when the captain fired at him.
It had gone three bells in the first dog watch;[16] we had just finished tea, and gone on deck to smoke our evening pipe. We were making ourselves very comfortable on the stern gratings, and our Scotch engineer—naval engineers for the most part are Scotch—was singing “For we are homeward bound;” not that we were homeward bound by a long chalk, but it gave us the idea we were, don’t you know? and made us feel all the jollier, when the quartermaster came aft, and addressing the officer of the watch—
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, leisurely, turning his quid in his mouth, “but I think, sir, there be a strong smell of fire right amidships.”
We went forward.
The second cutter lay bottom upwards, between the fore and main masts, and from under its gunnel were curling little puffs of light blue smoke, for all the world as if some one were smoking a cigar beneath the boat. But the smoke had the smell of burning wood.
Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Ah! had Edgar Allan Poe heard that bell, he might have added one other stanza to that strange wild poem of his. Ding, ding, ding, ding. You never heard it, did you reader? Well, it is a pleasure you still have before you. The breeze was freshening every minute, the sea was getting its back up, and darkness thickening around us. But what mattered darkness, we should soon light up old ocean with our burning ship.
Ding, ding, ding—up tumble the hands at the dread summons. The hoses are laid, the pumps rigged and manned as if by magic, and before the last sound of the bell is borne away on the breeze, every man is at quarters, steady, grave, and silent—waiting. Waiting? Aye; fancy having to wait for a single moment, with the fire crackling under the broiling deck, and tons of powder under hatches. But service is service—the captain alone has not responded to the alarm, and the officer of the watch has gone to call him. Worthy man, he was—
“Not fou, he just was glorious,
O’er a’ the ills of life victorious.”
“Oh!” he said; “ship’s on fire, is she. Then go you to blazes.”
He came up soon, however, and every man that night did his duty. Nothing in the world, save British pluck and coolness, could have conquered that fire. It was the padding at the back of the boiler that had caught, and burning through, had kindled the coals behind, and when the decks were scuttled, the scene below was like a red raging hell.