“She can’t last much longer now without the flames bursting forth,” said Captain Billings. “The sooner we see about leaving her the better now. Haul up the boats alongside, and prepare to lower down our sick men.”
“Hadn’t we better have a whip rigged from the yard-arm, sir?” suggested Jorrocks. “It’ll get ’em down more comfortable and easy like.”
“Aye, do; I declare I had forgotten that,” said the skipper; “I’m losing my head, I think, at the thought of the loss of my ship!” He spoke these words so sadly that they touched me keenly.
“No, no, Cap’, you haven’t loosed your head yet, so far as thinking about us is concerned,” observed Jorrocks, who was watching the man he had sent out on the mainyard fasten a block and tackle for lowering down the cots of the two invalids. I’m sure we all acquiesced in this hearty expression of the boatswain’s opinion, for no one could have more carefully considered every precaution for our comfort and security than the skipper, when making up his mind to abandon the ship.
No further words were wasted, however, as soon as the boats were hauled alongside.
Mr Ohlsen and Harmer were lowered down carefully into the long-boat, and the provisions, with the captain’s papers and instruments, were subsequently stowed in the stern-sheets by the side of the invalids. A similar procedure was then adopted in reference to the jolly-boat, only that there were no more sick men, fortunately, to go in her; and the skipper was just about mustering the hands on the after part of the main deck, below the break of the poop, when there was a terrible explosion forwards, the whole fore-part of the ship seeming to be rent in twain and hurled heavenward in a sheet of flame as vivid as forked lightning!
I don’t know by what sudden spasm of memory, but at that very instant my thoughts flew back to my boyish days at Beachampton, and my attempt to blow up Dr Hellyer and the whole school with gunpowder on that memorable November day, as I have narrated. The present calamity seemed somehow or other, to my morbid mind, a judgment on my former wicked conduct—the reflection passing through my brain at the instant of the explosion with almost a similar flash.