Then a blaze of light shot out, making day.
The arc lamp of the fore-mast, always ready to be used for night work, had been run up and switched on.
To starboard and stern of the Gaston de Paris, a great ship, within pistol shot of the deck, and with her canvas spilling the wind and thrashing and thundering, was dipping her bows in the sea. Men were fighting for the boats, and the stern was so high that more than half of the rudder shewed like a great door swinging on its hinges. On the counter in pale letters the word
“ALBATROSS”
shewed, and to the mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in that calm statement, those commonplace letters written upon destruction.
Clinging to the hatch combing she saw, now, as a person sees in a dream, sailors rushing and struggling aft along the slanting main deck. The engines had ceased working but the dynamos were running on steam from the main boilers, and through the noises that filled the night the sewing machine sound of them threshed like a pulse. What had happened, what was happening, she did not know. The great ship to port seemed sinking but the Gaston de Paris seemed safe, but for the horrible slant of the decks; she called out to the sailors, now clustered here and there by the boat davits, but her voice blew away on the wind, she saw Prince Selm, he was struggling aft along the slippery sloping deck, clutching at the bulwarks as he came, he seemed like a man engaged in some fantastic game—an unreal figure, now he was on the deck on all fours, now up again, clutching men by the shoulders, shaking them, shouting. She could hear his voice. The starboard boats were unworkable owing to the list to port. She did not know that, she only knew, and now for the first time, that the Gaston de Paris was in fearful danger. And instantly the thought came to her of the old woman below in her bunk and, on the thought, the mad instinct to rush below and save her.
Holding on to the woodwork of the hatch she was crawling towards the opening when blackness hit her like a blow between the eyes. The arc lamp had gone out, the dynamos had ceased running.
On the stroke of the darkness the Gaston de Paris heeled slightly deeper, flinging her to her knees, and as she hung, clutching the woodwork, she heard her name.
It was the Prince’s voice. She answered, and at once on her answer a hand seized her cruelly as a vice. It caught her by the shoulder. She felt herself dragged along, buffeted, lifted, cast down—then nothing more.