Before he could attract attention the boats were all pulling at top speed from the burning ship.
"She's going to blow up!" the words etched themselves on Jack's brain with the rapidity of a photographic plate.
He saw a convulsive tremor shake the big steel fabric and the despairing shouts of the men in the stern rang in his ears. At the same moment he dived and began swimming with all his strength away from the doomed ship. Suddenly came a shock that even under water seemed to drive his ear-drums in.
Then he felt himself seized as if in a giant's grip and dragged down, down, down. His vision grew scarlet. His heart beat as if it must burst from his frame and his entire body felt as if it was being cruelly compressed in a monster vise. Jack knew what had occurred: the boilers of the Oriana had blown up and he was being carried down by the suction of the hull as it sank.
Just as he felt that he could no longer endure the strain, the dragging sensation ceased. Like a stone from a catapult Jack was projected up again to the surface of the sea. The sky, the ocean, everything burned red as flame as he regained the blessed air and sucked it in in great lungfulls.
For a moment or so he was actually unconscious. Then, as his normal functions returned, and his sight grew less blurred, he made out a hatch floating not far from him. He struck out for this and clambered upon it. The sea was strewn with the wreckage of the explosion. Beams, skylights, even charred and blistered metal liferafts floated all about him. But these did not engross Jack's attention for long after he had cast his gaze in the direction where the Oriana last lay. There he encountered an extraordinary sight.
On the surface of the ocean floated the stern section of the sunken steamer. To it still clung the occupants that he had last seen there. Jack rubbed his eyes and looked and looked again. Yes, there was no doubt about it, the after part of the Oriana was still afloat, although how long it would remain so it was impossible to say.
Jack guessed, and as it afterward transpired, guessed correctly, that the watertight bulkhead doors, which had automatically been closed all over the ship when the collision occurred, were sustaining the stern fragment of the ship on the surface. This part of the Oriana, unharmed by the explosion or the collision, was now floating much as a corked bottle might be expected to do, excepting, of course, that there was a marked list to the drifting fragment.[1]
Jack now saw the scattered boats returning to the scene. The man in command of each was urging the crews on with voice and gesture. Not one had been harmed, but it was a narrow escape. Jack set up a shout, but apparently, in the excitement of racing for the floating stern part of the Oriana, he was unnoticed. However, this did not alarm him, for he was sure of being able to attract attention before long.
A sudden lurch of the hatchway on which he was drifting, and the sound of a slithering motion as of some heavy body being dragged along some rough surface, made him turn his head.