“You young whelp,” he cried, grabbing me by the collar. “Where are your letters? Eh? Where've you hid your letters?”
At that instant, there came a more violent gust in the fierceness of wind which drove us. The ship gave a “yank;” there is no other word to express the frightful shock of her movement. She lay down on her lee beam ends with a crash of breaking crockery. Casks broke loose in the hold; gear fell from aloft; the captain was flung under me against the ship's side. The deck beneath us sloped up like a roof. In the roar of water rushing down the hatch I remember thinking that the Day of Judgment was come. Yells on deck mingled with all the uproar; I heard something thud like a sledge-hammer on the ship's side. The captain picked himself up holding his head, which was all one gore of blood from the crack against the ship's side. “Beam ends,” he said stupidly. “Beam ends. Yes. Yes.” He was dazed; he did not know what he said; but some sort of sailor's instinct told him that he was wanted on deck. At any rate he went out, pulling himself up the steep deck with a cleverness which I had not expected. He left me clutching the ledge of the bunk, staring up at the door away above me, while the wreck of my belongings banged about at my feet. I thought it was all over with the ship; but I was not scared at the prospect of death; only a little sickish from the shock of that sudden sweeping over. I found a fascination in the horrible open door, the black oblong hole in the air through which the captain had passed. I waited for the sea to pour down it. I expected to see a clear mass of water with fish in it; something quite calm, something beautiful, not the noisy horror of the sea outside. I suppose I waited like that for a full minute before the roar of the squall grew less. Then I told myself that I must go on deck; that the danger would be less, looking it in the face, than down there in the cabin. It was not pleasant to go on deck, any more than it is pleasant to go downstairs at two in the morning to look for burglars, but it was better to be moving than staying still. I clenched my fist upon the only dip which remained alight (the other was somewhere in the jumble under my feet). Then, catching hold of the door-hook I pulled myself up to the door, where I steadied myself for a moment. While I stood there I had a horrible feeling of the ship having died under my feet. She had been leaping so gallantly only five minutes before. Now she lay with her heart broken, while the seas beat her with great thumps.
Two battle-lanterns lit the after 'tweendecks. There was a great heap of staved in casks, slopping about in an inch or two of water, all along that side, thrown there by the smash. I could hear the men yelling on deck. Captain Barlow was swearing in loud shouts. I could hear all this in the lull of the squall. I heard more than that, as I stood listening. I heard the faint crying out of a woman's voice from the steward's pantry (next door to the captain's cabin) on the opposite side, across the steep, tipped up slippery decks. At first I thought it must be the poor cat; but as the wind passed, letting me hear more clearly, I recognized that it was a woman's voice, crying out there in the darkness with a note of pain. I did not think of Aurelia. She never entered my head. All that I thought was “Poor creature! What a place for a woman!” The ship was jerking, you might almost call it gasping, as the seas struck her; it was no easy job to climb along that roof-slope of the deck with nothing to hold on by. I got across somehow, partly by luck, partly by fingernails. I even managed to open the pantry door, which was another difficulty, as it opened inwards, into the cabin. As I opened it, a suck of wind blew out my light. There I was in the dark, with a hurt woman, in a ship which for all I knew, might sink with all hands in twenty seconds. It is queer; I didn't mind the ship sinking. What I disliked was being in the dark with an unknown somebody who whimpered.
“Are you much hurt?” I asked. “Hold on a minute. I'll strike a light.” I shut myself into the cabin, so as to keep out the draught. My feet kicked among the steward's crockery. It was as dark in that cubby-hole as in a grave. The unknown person, probably fearing me, thinking me some rough drunken sailor, was crying out now more in terror than in pain. She was begging me not to hurt her. I probably frightened her a good deal by not replying. The tinder box took up all my attention for a good couple of minutes. A tinder box is not a thing to get light by hurriedly. You try some day, to see how quickly you can light a candle by one. When I got the candle lit, I thought of the battle-lanterns swinging outside all the time. I might have saved myself all that trouble by using a little common sense. Well. Wait till you stand as I stood, with your heart in your boots, down in a pit of death, you'll see how much common sense will remain in your fine brains.
When the flame took hold of the wick, so that I could look about me, I saw the lady Aurelia lying among the smashed up gear to leeward. She had been lying down, reading in a sort of bunk which had been rigged up for her on the locker-top. The shock had flung her clean out of the bunk on to the deck. At the same moment an avalanche of gear had fetched to leeward. A cask had rolled on to her left hand, pinning her down to the deck, while a box of bottles had cut the back of her head. A more complete picture of misery you could not hope to see. There was all the ill-smelling jumble of steward's gear, tumbled in a heap of smash, soaking in the oil from the fallen lamp. There was a good deal of blood about. Aurelia was lying in all the debris half covered with salted fish from one of the capsized casks. They looked like huge leaves. She seemed to have been buried under them, like a babe in the wood. She grew calm when she saw me. “There are candles under the bunk,” she said. “Light two or three. Tell me what has happened.”
I did not answer till I had lighted three or four more candles. “The ship's on her beam ends,” I said. “It's the captain's fault. But never mind that. I must get you out. Are you badly hurt, do you think?”
“I'm all right,” she said with a gasp. “But it's being pinned in here. I thought I was going to be pinned down while I was being drowned.”
“Shut your eyes, please,” I said. “Bite your lip. It'll hurt, I'm afraid, getting this cask off your hand. Are you ready. Now.” I did it as gently as I could; but it made me turn all cold to think of the hand under all that weight.
“Can you withdraw your hand, now?” I asked, tilting the cask as far up as I could.
“No,” she said. “Look out. I'll roll out.” In another two seconds she was sitting up among the crockery with her face deathly white against the bulkhead; she had fainted. There was a water-carafe on a bracket up above my head. I splashed her face with water from it till she rallied. She came to herself with a little hysterical laugh, at the very instant when something giving way aloft let the ship right herself again. “Hold on a minute,” I said. “Take this water. Now drink a little. I'll be back in a moment.” The ship was rolling drunkenly in the trough of the sea; but I made a nimble rush to the cabin, where the captain's cruet of brandy bottles still swung from a hook in the beams. I ran back to her with a bottle of brandy. There were a few unbroken mugs in the pantry, so I gave her a drink of brandy, which brought the colour back to her cheeks. While she sat there, in the mess of gear which slid about as the ship rolled, I got a good big jug of water from the scuttle-butt in the 'tweendecks. I nipped on deck with it to ask the mate for some balsam, an excellent cure for cuts which most sailors carry to sea with them. There was mess enough on deck in all conscience. I found the foretopmast gone over the side, in a tangle of torn rope at which all hands were furiously hacking. The mate was on the fo'c'sle hacking at some gear with a tomahawk. I did not see the captain.