They had barely staggered along the slippery main-deck, so far as where the stump of the mainmast yet held on, when another wave, its mighty head cresting and curling with foam, that seemed all the whiter amid the blackness of the night, burst over the doomed ship.
"Hold on, my lord," cried Derrick, "for the love of Heaven, hold on!"
"Yes—and for the love of my poor wife," added Richard, as they simultaneously grasped some of the belaying pins at the base of the mast, and as soon as the mountain of bitter water passed away to leeward leaving them drenched and half-blinded, a more fearful sight was visible by the pale light of the stars.
The entire poop, from which they had just issued, had been torn away from the ship; the wheel, with its four men, the skylights, the upper deck, and all that was in the cabin below, were gone, and all was ruin, and all was silence there save the seething of the angry sea. Some twenty of the passengers and crew were still clustered on the forecastle, seeking shelter between the bunks and windlass; but water was pouring fast into the ship, and as a portion of her deck was beginning to break up, Richard, who was powerful and brave as most men, grasped his faithful servant by the arm, and was assisting him towards this temporary and comfortless bourne, when some of the planking parted below him, and he was suddenly enclosed nearly to the waist, in the jarring woodwork. Then a double shriek escaped him, for both his thighs were broken, and he was so peculiarly jammed among the wreckage, that at that particular time no human power could either aid or save him.
Derrick could only remain near him, helpless, bewildered, and uttering exclamations of commiseration, which mingled with Richard's groans, the hiss of the sea, the roaring of the wind, and the piteous ejaculations of the passengers.
"Oh, Derrick, what a wretched thing I am now," said he, through his clenched teeth, "and what a proud, hale man I was some five minutes ago! Well, well, a six pound shot might have done as much for me elsewhere; but Derrick, God and myself alone know the agony—the awful agony I am enduring. Would to Heaven it were all over—even though I shall never see them more—Constance—Constance, and the children!" he added, while nearly gnawing through his nether lip, in the intensity of his pain and despair.
He made more than one frantic effort to wrench his crushed limbs, and torn and bleeding flesh out of the sudden and terrible trap into which he had fallen; but all such attempts were hopeless and futile, and he would pause exhausted and as pale as a corpse, with the perspiration wrung by agony, mingling with the spray on his temples. That he must soon be drowned, or die in an ecstasy of suffering was but too evident.
"I have often thought to die, Derrick," said he, in a husky voice, "and knew that the day and hour must come to me as they come to all; but I never thought to die thus. Blessed be God, that she knows nothing of it! Do you hear me, Braddon, my old comrade?"
And the servant wept as his master wrung his hand, and in weaker accents urged him to take possession of the two documents which were of such value to the family, and to preserve them even as he would his own life; and with tears in his eyes—tears that mingled with the wind-swept foam—Derrick promised to do so; and every minute Richard Trevelyan's once powerful and athletic frame grew weaker and weaker. Some of the arteries of his limbs had been torn as well as the ligaments, and he was evidently bleeding to death in his half-crushed situation.
Amid their own sufferings and danger, his dying words and prayers were unheeded by the pale and drenched wretches who clung close by to the windlass and forecastle ring-bolts; but terribly his sinking accents fell on the tympanum of Derrick's listening ear. His whole soul seemed as if filled by the idea of those he should never see again.