Every one was on deck at the time—the crew, the officers, the passengers; but, with the exception of a slight scream from Mrs Major Negus, which passed unnoticed, not a single exclamation of terror or alarm was uttered. All seemed completely stupefied by the unexpected shock, their consternation being too great for words—they stood as if spell-bound!
Captain Dinks was the first to break the silence.
“God forgive me!” he cried out to everybody’s surprise. “It is all my fault!”
“Your fault!” repeated Mr Meldrum; “how—why?”
“I should have had a man forward, sounding with the lead, but I quite forgot it—quite forgot it; and this has happened.”
“Nonsense, man!” said the other to cheer him up—the captain appearing to be more concerned at his own neglect, as he regarded it, than he was at the actual fact of the ship’s striking on the reef—“such a precaution would have been utterly useless! We were probably in deep water a minute before; and even if a man had been stationed in the chains, he could scarcely have had time to have swung the lead and sang out the marks, before she was on the rocks! It is one of those unforeseen calamities that are inevitable and which can never be prevented by any human foresight. I for one, and I’ve no doubt every one else here agrees with me, entirely exonerate you from all blame.”
The captain was endeavouring to make some broken reply, as far as his deep emotion would allow, when Mrs Major Negus interrupted him.
“Speak for yourself, please, Mr Meldrum,” she exclaimed, elbowing herself forwards in front of the group, her shrill high-pitched voice sounding almost like another scream, as she waved her arms wildly about and addressed Mr Meldrum and Captain Dinks alternately. “Speak for yourself, please, for I don’t agree with you at all! I say it is the captain’s fault; and he knows it, though it’s rather late in the day for him to acknowledge it! And I’d like to know, sir, how I and my darling boy are going to get on shore now in this blinding snowstorm—in such a bleak and dreary outlandish place, too! A nice captain you are; and you bargained to take us safe to New Zealand when you took our passage-money. My poor Maurice, oh my dear boy, you’ll never, never see your father now, for we’ll all be drowned, and Captain Dinks is the cause of it!”
So shrieking, she proceeded to weep and wail in a way that made Mr Meldrum lose all patience with her.
“Peace, woman!” cried he indignantly. “This is no time for hysterics and such violent displays: you’d better keep them till the fine weather comes, and remain quiet now! The best thing you can do if you hope to escape, is to allow the captain to see about getting the boats ready to take us off, for the ship will probably break up soon.”