“Look out!” shouted Mr Bowles. “Here it comes with a vengeance. Take care of yourselves, everybody.”
The gloom had visibly deepened, until it became difficult for those grouped together on the poop to distinguish each other’s features, and a low deep humming sound was now audible, which increased in volume with startling rapidity.
“Go below all of you, I beg,” repeated Captain Staunton in anxious tones, “and be as quick as you can about it, please. What is the matter, Mr Dale?” as that individual stood a few steps down the staircase, grasping the handrail on each side, neither descending himself nor allowing anyone else to do so.
“My book,” exclaimed Dale; “I left a book on one of the hen-coops, and—”
His further remarks were drowned in the deafening din of the tempest, which at this moment swooped down upon the ship with indescribable fury, striking her full upon her starboard broadside, and hurling her over in an instant on her beam-ends. The group gathered about the companion-way made an instinctive effort to save themselves, Rex Fortescue flinging his arm about Violet Dudley’s waist and dragging her with him to the mizen-mast, where he hung on desperately to a belaying-pin. Brook nimbly scrambled upon the upturned weather side of the companion. Evelin, exasperated by Mr Dale’s ill-timed anxiety about his book, had stepped inside the companion-way and down a stair or two to summarily remove the obstructor, and the two were flung together to the bottom of the staircase. Blanche, left thus without a protector, clung convulsively for a moment to one of the open doors of the companion; but her strength failing her, she let go and fell backwards with a shriek into the water which foamed hungrily up over the lee rail.
Bob, who had made a spring for the weather mizen rigging, was just passing a turn or two of a rope round his body when, happening to turn his head, he saw Blanche fall. To cast himself adrift and spring headlong after her was the work of an instant, and he succeeded in grasping her dress just in the nick of time, for in another instant the ship would have driven over her, and Blanche’s fate would have been sealed. As it was, they both had a very narrow escape, for Bob in his haste had omitted to take a rope’s-end with him, and had consequently no means of returning inboard, or rather, for the lee side of the deck was buried in the water, of regaining a place of safety. In this emergency Brook, who was a witness of the scene, acted in a very prompt and creditable manner. The rope, by which Bob had been in the act of securing himself, streamed out in the wind in such a way as to come within Brook’s reach, and by its aid he at once drew himself up to windward, and, climbing out on to the weather side of the ship, dexterously dropped from thence a coiled-up rope’s-end, which he had taken off a belaying-pin, directly down upon Bob’s head. Bob at once grasped the rope with his disengaged hand, and with a rapid twist threw two or three turns round his arm, whereupon Brook, exerting all his strength, drew his prizes steadily up the steeply inclined deck until they were able to scramble into the place he had vacated upon the companion.