While he stood at the little grating, rattling at the door, a great tumult broke out at the lower end of the town where Hi had seen the mansion. After twenty minutes of this he noticed that the pent-house on his right began to take colour. A glow came upon the tiles. The racket continued for half an hour. “They’re having a good old racket of destruction,” he thought. When he looked again through the grating, he noticed that the glare upon the tiles of the pent-house had changed to a glittering intermittence. “I believe they’re burning the town,” he thought. “If they are, we shall be burned like rats in a trap.”
“What say?” a voice asked.
Hi looked round startled. He saw the second of the two drunkards sitting up and looking at him. He was a littleish man with a flushed hatchet face which shone in the light.
“The town’s on fire,” Hi said; “we may be burnt if they don’t let us out.”
“What say?”
“The town’s on fire: we may be burnt.”
“ ’Ere, let me come on deck.”
He came on deck, a little unsteady on his legs and smelling very strong of aniseed. “Damn to hell,” he said, when he had come on deck and looked through the grating.
“A bit of fair old, rare old,” he said.
He turned on Hi suddenly to ask: