“Keep wide,” he said. “If there are many fellows yet aboard, they'll swamp us; and I think there must be, as we haven't met the boats,” and then raising his voice, as the exhausted crew lay on their oars, he hailed the burning ship.
She was a huge, clumsily-built vessel, with great breadth of beam, and a lofty poop-deck. Strangely enough, though they had so lately seen the fire, she was already a wreck, and appeared to be completely deserted. The chief hold of the fire was amidships, and the lower deck was one mass of flame. Here and there were great charred rifts and gaps in her sides, and the red-hot fire glowed through these as through the bars of a grate. The main-mast had fallen on the starboard side, and trailed a blackened wreck in the water, causing the unwieldy vessel to lean over heavily. The fire roared like a cataract, and huge volumes of flame-flecked smoke poured up out of the hold, and rolled away in a low-lying black cloud over the sea.
As Frere's boat pulled slowly round her stern, he hailed the deck again and again.
Still there was no answer, and though the flood of light that dyed the water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer, they could distinguish the gilded letters of her name.
“What is it, men?” cried Frere, his voice almost drowned amid the roar of the flames. “Can you see?”
Rufus Dawes, impelled, it would seem, by some strong impulse of curiosity, stood erect, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Well—can't you speak? What is it?”
“The Hydaspes!”
Frere gasped.
The Hydaspes! The ship in which his cousin Richard Devine had sailed! The ship for which those in England might now look in vain! The Hydaspes which—something he had heard during the speculations as to this missing cousin flashed across him.