We now had a moment in which to take a look below, and see what result had attended our labours. A glance at the fore-scuttle was anything but reassuring, dense clouds of steam and smoke issuing by this time from the opening, and as we looked the smoke suddenly became tinged with the lurid reflection of flames. I darted to the opening, and looking down as well as I could through the blinding suffocating clouds which rushed up in denser volumes every instant, saw that the bulkhead was burned through, and the flames already spreading in every direction.
The fire-engine was instantly started once more, the hose being this time directed down into the forecastle, and for twenty minutes we played upon the fire there—the rain all the while rushing down in sheets and fast filling our decks—without result; at the end of that time it became apparent that the ship was doomed.
Hawsepipe and the doctor had meanwhile pressed their investigations farther aft, soon reappearing with the alarming news that the fire was spreading aft with great rapidity.
“Then there is nothing for it but to take to the boat without further delay,” said I.
And we set about getting her over the side forthwith, our motions being considerably accelerated by the increasing loudness of the roaring crackling sound of the fire, the dense cloud of smoke which now enveloped the ship, and the almost unbearable heat of the deck. The flames spread so rapidly that by the time we had got the boat into the water, with her oars, sails, etcetera, a couple of breakers of water, a bag or two of biscuits, and a miscellaneous collection of small stores from the cabin lockers, the heat and smoke had become so unendurable that we could not remain still a moment, indeed so sorely pressed were we that the poor fellows who had been injured by the lightning, and who had been brought on deck some time before to save them from suffocation, were almost thrown over the side into the boat; we scrambled in after them, and casting off got out the oars, and pulled as fast as we could from the ship, which in another minute was blazing from stem to stern, notwithstanding the still pouring rain.
We pushed off in dead silence, and, having pulled far enough away to be clear of the scorching heat, laid with one consent upon our oars to watch the conflagration. We had been lying thus motionless upon the water some three or four minutes, when the mainmast swayed slowly to and fro for a moment, and then fell with a hissing splash into the water alongside, a shower of sparks shooting up at the same moment from the burning bulwarks which had been crushed out by the mast in its fall. We were watching and remarking upon the way in which the planks of the topsides were twisting up and opening out from the timbers under the influence of the tremendous heat, when suddenly an awful recollection flashed upon me.
“Pull! pull for your lives!” I screamed. “We have forgotten to drown out the magazine.”
Not another word was needed. With one accord the oars dashed into the water, and you may rest assured that we threw our entire weight and strength into each stroke, bending the stout ash staves as though they were pliant whalebone, and all but lifting the boat clear out of the water.
We had not pulled more than a dozen strokes before there was a violent concussion, as though we had run stem-on upon a sandbank, the schooner’s sides burst apart, the flaming planks of the deck, with its fittings, the guns, and everything else upon it, soared into the air in the midst of a blinding sheet of flame, and then came the dull, heavy roar of the explosion, and—black darkness.
We ceased pulling as the explosion took place, struck powerless for the moment at this sudden and terrible destruction which had befallen the craft so lately our home and ark of safety, and it was only when the fiery fragments began to fall thickly round us that we took to our oars once more.