Captain Snaggs made no retort; but, moving to the port bulwarks from the companion hatchway, where he had been standing, followed Tom’s suggestion of looking over the side, which indeed all of us, impelled by a similar curiosity, at once did.
It was as my friend the carpenter had said.
The Denver City was for more than two-thirds of her length high and dry ashore on a sandy beach, that looked of a brownish yellow in the moonlight, with her forefoot resting between two hillocks covered with some sort of scrub. This prevented her from falling over broadside on, as she was shored up just as if she had been put into dry dock for caulking purposes; although, unfortunately, she was by no means in such a comfortable position, nor were we on board either, as if she had been in a shipbuilder’s yard, with more civilised surroundings than were to be found on a desert shore like this!
Her bilge abaft under the mizzen-chains was just awash; and, the water, deepening from here, as the shore shelved somewhat abruptly, was about the depth of four fathoms or thereabouts by the rudder post, where the bottom could be seen, of soft, shining white sand, without a rock in sight—so far, at least, as we were able to notice in the pale greenish moonlight, by which we made our observations as well as we could, and with some little difficulty, too.
“Guess we’re in a pretty tight fix,” said Captain Snaggs, after peering up and down alongside for some time, Tom Bullover in the interim taking the hand lead with him on to the poop and sounding over the taffrail at the deepest part. “We can’t do nuthin’, though, I reckon, till daylight, an’ ez we’re hard an’ fast, an’ not likely to float off, I’ll go below an’ turn in till then. Mister Steenbock, ye’d better pipe the hands down an’ do ditter, I guess, fur thaar’s no use, I ken see, in stoppin’ up hyar an’ doin’ nuthin’.”
“Yous can go below; I vill keep ze vatch,” replied the second-mate, with ill-concealed contempt, as the skipper shuffled off down the companion way again, back to his orgy with the equally drunken Flinders, who had not once appeared on deck, after perilling the ship through his obstinacy in putting her on the course that had led to our being driven ashore.
The very first shock of the earthquake, indeed, which we felt before the tidal wave caught us, had been sufficient to frighten him from the poop even before the darkness enveloped us and the final catastrophe came!
As for Jan Steenbock, he remained walking up and down the deck as composedly as if the poor Denver City was still at sea, instead of being cooped up now, veritably, like a fish out of water, on dry land.
He did not abandon his post, at any rate!
After a while, though, he acted on the skipper’s cowardly advice so far as to tell the starboard watch to turn in, which none of the men were loth to do, for the moon was presently obscured by a thick black cloud, and a torrent of heavy tropical rain quickly descending made most of us seek shelter in the fo’c’s’le.