“My engines are wrecked, sir; utterly destroyed,” answered Kennedy; “and the ship is holed through her bottom, down in the engine-room. The hole is big enough to drive a coach through, and the room is half-full of water already. If either of the bulkheads goes we shall sink like a stone!”
At this juncture we were joined by the chief, second, and third officers, who came upon each other’s heels.
“Ah! here you are, gentlemen,” remarked the skipper. “I was about to send for you. I learn from Mr Blackburn that the ship has been struck by a falling meteor which, Mr Kennedy tells me, has passed through her bottom. According to him the engine-room is flooded; and he is of opinion that if either of the engine-room bulkheads yields the ship will go down quickly—in which opinion I agree with him. Even as it is, you may notice that the ship is taking a strong list, and is very perceptibly deeper in the water; therefore I will ask you, Mr Hoskins,” (to the chief officer) “and you, Mr Cooper,” (to the second) “to muster the hands, proceed to the boat-deck, and clear away the boats, ready for lowering, in case of necessity. You, Mr Stroud,” (to the third officer) “will mount guard at the foot of the boat-deck ladder and prevent passengers passing up until the boats are ready and I give the word. Mr Blackburn, go down and find the purser; tell him what has happened, what we are doing, and ask him to keep the people quiet until we are ready for them, and you can lend him a hand. Thank God, the boats are all provisioned, ready for any emergency, while the water in them was renewed only yesterday, so there is nothing to do but cut them adrift and swing them outboard. That is all at present, gentlemen, so go and get to work at once—why, who are those men on the boat-deck now, and what are they doing with the boats?”
“Looks like the miners,” answered Hoskins. “They’re a rough lot, and as likely as not we may have trouble with ’em. Ay, I thought so! Our chaps are up there too, trying to send the others away, and they don’t seem inclined to go. Come along, Cooper, we’ve got to clear those miners off somehow, or we shall get nothing done.”
Therewith the four of us departed upon our respective missions, leaving the captain in charge on the bridge.
The decks were now full of people rushing aimlessly hither and thither, stopping everybody they met, and asking each other what had happened. Meanwhile all the electric lights had been switched on, so that it was possible to see who was who, and, as I quite expected, no sooner did those poor distracted creatures catch sight of my uniform than I was surrounded, hemmed in by a crowd who piteously besought me to tell them what had happened, and if there was any danger. I had by this time quite recovered my self-possession, and was therefore able to answer them calmly and with a steady voice. Naturally, I did not tell them the whole truth, for that, I knew, would precipitate a panic in which everybody would get out of hand. I therefore told them there had been a breakdown in the engine-room, which was being attended to; that there was no immediate danger, but that I strongly advised them, purely as a measure of precaution, to return to their cabins, dress themselves warmly, and put into their pockets, or into parcels, any money or valuables they might have in their baggage, so that in the event of anything untoward happening, whereby we might be compelled to take to the boats, they would be prepared to do so at a moment’s notice. Some of them listened to me and allowed themselves to be persuaded, but others seemed afraid to leave the deck for a moment lest they should be overtaken by calamity.
After all, their apprehension was not to be wondered at; there was excuse enough for it, and to spare. There was a very strong smell of burning and occasional puffs of smoke coming up from below, where the engine-room staff were fighting the flames. The ship had taken a heavy and steadily-increasing list to starboard; she was visibly settling in the water; and, to crown all, the crowd of miners who upon the first alarm had taken possession of the boat-deck were refusing to leave it, and a brisk struggle between them and the seamen was proceeding, though as yet no firearms were being used. But I knew Hoskins’s temper; he was by no means a patient man, or one given to much verbal argument. It was usually a word and a blow with him, and not infrequently the blow came first; I knew also that he habitually carried a revolver in his pocket when at sea. I should not, therefore, have been at all surprised to hear the crack of the weapon at any moment.
I had just managed to extricate myself from the crowd, and was making my way toward the purser’s cabin, when from the interior of the ship, and almost beneath my feet, there came a deep boom, and I knew that the after bulkhead of the engine-room had given way, and that the moments of the Saturn were numbered.
“No use to hunt up the purser, now,” I thought; and I made a dash for the boat-deck, to see if I could render any assistance there. But I was too late; the sound of the bursting bulkhead, coming on top of the previous alarms, was all that was needed to produce the panic I had all along been dreading, and in an instant the decks were alive with frantic people, all desperately fighting their way upward to the boat-deck, where pandemonium now raged supreme, and where pistols were popping freely, showing that Hoskins was by no means the only man in the ship who went armed.
Now, what was the best thing for me to do? Could I do anything useful? I stood on the outskirts of that seething, maddened crowd, and watched men and women striving desperately together, trampling each other remorselessly down; shrieking, cursing, fighting; no longer human, but reduced by the fear of death to the condition of rabid, ferocious brutes. No, I could do nothing: as well go down below and attempt to stay the inrush of water with my two hands, as strive by argument to restore those people to reason; while, as for force, what could my strength avail against that of hundreds? No, they had all gone mad, and, in their madness, were destroying themselves, rendering it impossible to launch the boats, and so dooming themselves and everybody else to death. It was awful! That scene often revisits me in dreams, even to this day, and I awake sweating and trembling with the unspeakable horror of it.