“Je-rusalem!” exclaimed Captain Snaggs, rushing out from the cabin in his night-shirt, having just turned in, and not stopping to dress—as the fluttering white garment and his thin legs showing beneath plainly demonstrated. This I noticed when the mass of heavy clouds with which the sky was covered overhead shifted for a moment, allowing a stray gleam from the watery moon to light up the deck, and saw the skipper hurrying up to the scene of action, where he was the first to arrive. “What’s all this durned muss about?”
Jan Steenbock answered him. He had not gone below when his watch was relieved, and being attracted by the row, was now preparing for emergencies by rigging a hose on to the head-pump, so that this could be at once passed down into the hold if necessary—the first-mate being too frightened to do anything, even to reply to the captain when he spoke. Indeed, he seemed perfectly paralysed with fear.
“Dere vas shmoke come out vrom ze forepeak,” said the second-mate, in his deep guttural tones; “and I zinks dere vas one fire in ze holt. Mishter Vlinders vas give ze alarm and cal’t all hands.”
“Guess I heerd thet; an’, I reckon, Mr Flinders hed better hev comed an’ told me quietly, instead of skearin’ everybody into a blue funk!” snapped out Captain Snaggs, dancing about on his spindleshank legs like a pea on a hot griddle, and dodging the smoke as it puffed in his face, while peering forward to see whence it came. “Hev any of yer chaps ben down below to prospect whaar the durned thing is?”
“It vas in ze forepeak, cap’n,” said Jan Steenbock, in response to this question. “I vas zee it meinselfs.”
“Is the hose ready?”
“Aye, aye, sir!” shouted back a score of voices, all hands being now on deck and every one forward, save the helmsman and steward—the latter, no doubt, snoozing away comfortably in his bunk, and not troubling himself about the disturbance, thinking, if he thought at all, that the call of the first-mate was only probably to shorten sail, in which case he might just as well remain where he was. “The hose is rigged and the head-pump manned, sir.”
“Then let her rip!” shouted the skipper. “Go it, my hearties, an’ flood it out. I’ve hed nary a fire aboard my ship afore; an’ I don’t want to be burnt out now, I reckon, with all them dry goods an’ notions below, by thunder! Put your back into it, ye lubbers, an’ let her rip, I tell ye; she’s all oak!”
One party of men attended to the pump, Jan Steenbock directing the end of the hose down the half-opened hatch, the lid having been partly slipped off by some one. The captain ranged the rest along the gangway, passing the buckets; and these a couple of others standing in the forechains dipped in the sea, hauling them up when full and handing them to those nearest, the skipper clutching hold when they reached him and chucking their contents down below.
The smoke in a minute or two perceptibly diminished in volume; and, presently, only a thin spiral wreath faintly stole up, in lieu of the thick clouds that had previously almost stifled us.