The three vessels now went at it, hammer and tongs, the brigantine being for the moment fairly under the frigate’s guns. But Winter soon very cleverly got himself out of this awkward situation, and,—while the Frenchmen were busily engaged in an endeavour to clear away the wreck and get their ship once more before the wind,—laid himself athwart their bows and, with his topsail aback, poured broadside after broadside into the helpless craft; while the Dolphin, gliding hither and thither, beyond the reach of the frigate’s guns, sent home an eighteen-pound shot every two or three minutes, every one of which appeared to tell somewhere or other on the Frenchman’s hull. We now ran away from them, fast, however, and by noon had lost sight of them altogether. But, when last seen, they were still hammering away at each other, the brigantine and schooner appearing to be getting rather the best of it.
Once fairly out of sight of the combatants, we took in our studding-sails, and hauled our wind to the northward, in obedience to Captain Winter’s orders; and although I had a sharp look-out for the Dolphin and her consort maintained throughout the whole of the next day, I was not greatly surprised at their not heaving in sight. I had not much misgiving as to the ultimate result of the fight; but I believed that the brigantine at least would not get off without a rather severe mauling, in which case the schooner would naturally stand by her until she could be again put into decent workable trim.
The fourth day after the fight dawned without bringing us a sight of our consorts, and I then began to feel rather uneasy; fearing that they had probably missed us, somehow, and that we should have to make our way home as best we could, unprotected; and to enter the English Channel just then, unprotected, meant almost certain capture. For although the Indiaman was certainly armed, after a fashion, most of her guns were “quakers”, while the others—ten in all—were only six-pounders; and it would need the whole of her crew to work her only, under her awkward jury-rig, with no one to spare for fighting. However, it was useless to meet trouble half-way; so I determined to plod steadily onward and homeward, hoping for the best. Hitherto, ever since the day of our meeting with the Frenchman, we had experienced moderate but steady breezes from the northward and eastward, but on the day of which I am now writing there were indications of an impending change. The wind gradually died down to a light, fitful air that came in flaws, first from one quarter of the compass and then from another, lasting but a few minutes, with lengthening intervals of calm between them, while huge piles of black, thunderous-looking cloud gradually heaped up along the northern horizon until they had overspread the whole sky. The barometer, too, exhibited a tendency to fall; but the decline was so slight that I was of opinion it meant no more than perhaps a sharp thunder-squall, particularly as there was no swell making; moreover there was a close, thundery feeling in the stagnating air, which increased as the day grew older. It was not, however, until about an hour after sunset, and just as we were sitting down to dinner in the cuddy, that the outbreak commenced; which it did with a sudden, blinding flash of lightning that darted out of the welkin almost immediately overhead, instantly followed by a deafening crash of thunder that caused the Indiaman to tremble to her keel; the sensation being not unlike what one would expect to feel if the craft were being swept rapidly along over a sandy bottom which she just touched.
This first flash was soon followed by another, not quite so near at hand, then by another, and another, and another, until the lightning was playing all about us in such rapidly succeeding flashes that the whole atmosphere was luminous with a continuous quivering of ghastly blue-green light, while the heavens resounded and the ship trembled with the unbroken crash and roll of the thunder. The spectacle was magnificent, but it was also rather trying to the nerves; the lightning being so dazzlingly vivid that it was positively blinding, while I had never heard such awful thunder before, even in the West Indies. Several of the lady passengers, indeed, were so unnerved by the storm that they retreated from the table and shut themselves into their cabins. Even young Dumaresq, who had hitherto appeared to be irrepressible, was subdued by the awful violence of the turmoil that raged around us. He was admitting something to this effect to me when he was cut short by a blaze of lightning that seemed to envelop the whole ship in a sheet of flame; there was a rending shock, violent enough to suggest that the Indiaman had come into violent collision with another vessel—although we were fully aware that such a thing could not be, the weather at the moment being stark calm,—the hot air seemed to suddenly become surcharged with a strong sulphurous smell; and then came a peal of thunder of so terrific and soul-subduing a character that it might have been the crash of a shattered world. For a brief space we were all so thoroughly overpowered, so awed and overwhelmed by this tremendous manifestation of the Creator’s power that we remained speechless and motionless on our seats; then, as the echo of the thunder rumbled away into the distance, and our hearing gradually recovered from the shock of that last dreadful detonation, we became aware of loud shrieks of pain out on deck, a brilliant light, a confused rush and scurry of feet, and shouts of:
“Fire! fire! The ship’s been struck, and is all ablaze!”
At the cry, Captain Chesney, Dumaresq, and I sprang to our feet and dashed out on deck. Merciful Heaven! what an appalling scene met our gaze! The foremast had been struck, and was cloven in twain from the jury topgallant-mast-head to the deck; it had also been set on fire, and the blazing mass of timber, cordage, and canvas had fallen back upon the mainmast, setting the sails and rigging of that mast also on fire; the flames blazing fiercely as they writhed and coiled about the spars and darted hither and thither, like fiery serpents, through the mazes of the tarred and highly inflammable rigging. But that was by no means the worst of it. The lightning, upon reaching the deck, appeared to have darted hither and thither in the most extraordinary way, for we presently discovered that a considerable quantity of metal-work, such as iron bands, belaying-pins, bolts, the chain topsail-sheets, and other such matters had been either wholly or partially fused by the terrific heat of the electric discharge; while several silent, prostrate figures on the deck, scorched black, and with their clothing burnt from their bodies, told that death had been busy in that awful instant when the bolt had struck the ship. But there was worse even than that; for there were other figures crouched and huddled upon the deck, moaning piteously with pain; and one man stood erect, with his hands clasped over his eyes, and his head thrown back, shrieking to be taken below, for he had been struck blind!
It was a dreadful moment; a moment of frightful peril, and of horror indescribable; a moment when a man might well be excused if he found himself temporarily overmastered by the accumulated terrors of his surroundings; but Chesney, the captain of the Indiaman, proved equal to the occasion. For a single instant he stood aghast at the awful spectacle that met his horrified gaze; then he pulled himself together and, instinctively assuming the command—as, under the circumstances, he was perfectly justified in doing,—he made his voice ring from end to end of the ship as he ordered all hands to be called. The order, however, was scarcely necessary, for by this time the watch below—startled by the shock of the lightning-stroke, the shrieks of the injured, and that indefinable conviction of something being wrong that occasionally seizes people upon the occurrence of some dire catastrophe—were tumbling up through the fore-scuttle with much of the hurry and confusion of panic, which was greatly increased when they beheld the masts, sails, and rigging all ablaze. By voice and example, however, we presently contrived to steady them and get them under control; and then, while one gang was told off to convey the injured men below—Dumaresq meanwhile hurrying away to summon the doctor, who was busily engaged in the cabin, endeavouring to soothe some of the lady passengers, who were in hysterics,—the rest of the crew were set to work to rig the pumps, muster the buckets, and pass along the hose. In a few minutes all was ready, the pumps were started, and the chief mate, with a line to which the end of the hose was bent, climbed up into the main-top, from which he began to play upon the fire. But by this time the flames had acquired such a firm hold upon the spars, canvas, and heavily tarred rigging that the jet of water from the hose proved quite incapable of producing any visible effect whatever upon them; and the mate himself soon became so hemmed in by the fire that he was in the very act of retreating to the deck when the flood-gates of heaven were opened, and the rain suddenly pelted down in such overwhelming torrents that in less than five minutes the conflagration aloft was completely extinguished; but not until the sails had been burnt to tinder, the spars badly charred, and most of the standing and running rigging destroyed.
With the outburst of rain that had rendered us such excellent service the violence of the storm sensibly abated, perhaps because it had nearly spent itself; at all events the lightning discharges now succeeded each other at steadily lengthening intervals as the storm passed away to the southward, the thunder died down to a distant booming and rumbling, and finally ceased altogether in about an hour and a half from the commencement of the outbreak, while the lightning became a harmless, fitful quivering of vari-coloured light along the southern horizon.
But we were now in a most awkward predicament; a predicament that might easily become disastrous should it come on to blow, as was by no means impossible. For not only had three men been killed outright and eight more or less seriously injured by that terrible lightning-stroke, but our sails were gone, our foremast destroyed, and our rigging so badly injured that our main and mizzen-masts stood practically unsupported; while we had too much reason to fear that the masts and spars themselves were so seriously weakened by the play of the flames upon them as to have become of little or no use to us. And, to crown all, it was now so pitch-dark that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain the full extent of our disaster until daylight. Our situation, however, was too critical to admit of our waiting until then; it was of vital importance that immediate steps should be taken to secure what had been left to us; and, with this object, the carpenter and boatswain procured lanterns with which they proceeded aloft to make a critical examination into the condition of the spars and rigging. They were thus engaged when the doctor, who had been down in the forecastle, attending to the hurts of the wounded men, appeared on deck, and, catching sight of Captain Chesney and myself standing together under the break of the poop, beckoned us to follow him into his cabin.