Instinctively I sprang to my feet and whipped a pistol out of my belt, cocking it as I did so.
“Out pistols, men, and give it a volley!” I cried; and the next instant a somewhat confused pistol discharge shattered the breathless silence of the night. My own fire I had withheld, waiting to see what would be the effect of the men’s fire upon the
monster. Whether any of them had hit it or not I could not tell, but beyond causing the creature to pause for an instant, as though startled by the flashing of fire, the volley seemed to have had no effect, for the horrid thing continued to approach the boat, while the disgusting odour which it emitted grew almost overpowering. It must have been within ten feet of the boat when I aimed straight at its left eye, and pulled the trigger of my pistol. For an instant the bright flash dazzled me so that I could see nothing, but I distinctly heard the “phitt” of the bullet, felt a hot puff of the sickening stench strike me full in the face, and became aware of a tremendous swirl and disturbance of the water as the huge creature plunged beneath the surface and was gone.
Chapter Four.
The boats in a tornado.
We had scarcely begun to settle down again, and regain the control of our nerves after this distinctly startling adventure, when the dense canopy of black cloud overhead was rent asunder by a flash of lightning, steel-blue, keen, and dazzlingly vivid, that seemed to strike the water within a dozen fathoms of us, while simultaneously we were deafened by a crackling crash of thunder of such appalling loudness and violence that one might have been excused for believing that the very foundations of the earth had been riven asunder. So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the longboat quiver and tremble under its influence. And the next instant down came the rain in a regular tropical, torrential downpour, causing the sea to hiss as though each individual drop of rain were red-hot, and starting us to work at once in both boats with the balers, to save our provisions from being ruined. I happened to be looking away in a westerly direction when the flash came, and despite its dazzling vividness I caught a momentary glimpse of the pirate brig in that direction, and not more than a mile distant from us. None of the others in the boats appeared to have seen her, for no one said a word; and I only hoped that no eye on board her had happened to be turned toward us at the moment, or they could not have failed to see us; and she was altogether too near for my liking. I said nothing, for it seemed unnecessary to disturb the men by informing them of her whereabouts; and I comforted myself with the reflection that when the squall should come—as come it now must in a very few minutes,—she, like ourselves, would be compelled to scud before it; and as she would run two feet to our one, she would soon run us out of sight.
We had not long to wait. After the deluge of rain had lasted some three minutes it ceased as abruptly as it had begun, and for the space of perhaps half a minute there was no sound to be heard save the trickling and dripping of water from the drenched sails of the boats. Then, far away to the eastward there gradually arose a low moaning, and a sudden fierce puff of hot air struck us for an instant, filling the sails of the longboat with a loud flap and leaving them hanging motionless again.