“Yes, sir.”
There was a pause. Archie Armstrong and Jimmie Grimm, aft near the wheel, wondered why the skipper had put the question.
“An’ where,” the skipper asked, quietly, “did you put the powder?”
“For’ard, sir.”
“How far for’ard?”
“Fair up against the forecastle bulkhead!”
The appalling significance of this was plain to 105 the crew. The bulkhead was a thin partition dividing the forecastle from the hold.
“Archie,” Skipper Bill drawled, “you better loose the stays’l sheet. She ought t’ do better than this.” He paused. “Fair against the forecastle bulkhead?” he continued. “Tom, you better get the hatch off, an’ see what you’re able t’ do about gettin’ them six kegs o’ powder out. No––bide here!” he added. “Take the wheel again, Billy. Get that hatch off, some o’ you.”
It was the skipper himself who dropped into the hold. The cargo was packed tight. Heavy barrels of flour, puncheons of molasses, casks of pork and beef, lay between the skipper and the powder. He crawled forward, wriggling in the narrow space between the freight and the deck. No fire had as yet entered the hold; but the place was full of stifling smoke. It was apparent that the removal of the powder would be the labour of hours; and there were no hours left for labour. The skipper could stand the smoke no longer. He retreated towards the hatch. How long it would be before the fire communicated itself to the cargo––how long it would be before the explosion of six kegs of powder would scatter the 106 wreck of the First Venture upon the surface of the sea––no man could tell. But the end was inevitable.
Anxious questions greeted the skipper when again he stood upon the wind-swept deck.