The lascar bowman resumed his oar, pulling the boat's head round. Finding his companion idle he prodded him in the back with his foot, with the result that the man gave a few desultory strokes. In the utter darkness the lascars had lost all sense of direction, and, instead of pulling away from the ship, they were slightly closing with her.
Suddenly a hissing sound rent the air. It was the ship plunging beneath the waves. The boat, caught by the turmoil of the tempestuous seas, was thrown about like a cork. One of the men was hurled off the thwart by the loom of his oar striking him in the face. The oar was swept from his grasp and lost overboard.
To Olive, crouching on the bottom-boards, it seemed as if the boat were being lifted vertically. The movement reminded her of the sudden and unexpected starting of a lift. Then, heeling terribly, the boat dipped her gunwale under, and a cascade poured into her until Olive was sitting waist deep in water.
Her first act was to raise Mrs. Shallop's head. The shock of the water had caused that lady partly to recover consciousness. She was moaning and coughing.
The violent motion lasted for quite a minute, then the maelstrom subsided, and the partly waterlogged boat bobbed sluggishly on the waves. The lascars, now roused to activity, were baling furiously with their hands, since in the darkness it was impossible to find the baler which was supposed to be in the boat.
"Mr. Preston!" exclaimed Olive once more.
"Preston Sahib he dead man," was Mahmed's startling announcement, although the words were delivered with the imperturbability of the Asiatic.
The horror of the situation gripped the plucky girl. Throughout the period between the explosion and the foundering of the West Barbican she had been perfectly self-possessed, her chief solicitude being for her tyrannical employer. Now the full magnitude of the disaster became apparent. She and the unconscious Mrs. Shallop were alone in the boat with three apparently incapable lascars. Preston was, presumably, dead; Mostyn she had seen standing on the bridge just before the ship sank, keeping up the traditions of the Wireless Service to remain at his post as long as the ship was afloat and the transmitting apparatus was capable of being worked.
The other boats were neither to be seen nor heard. Whether they were still standing by or whether they were making for the nearest land the girl knew not.
She would have welcomed another lightning flash, out none came. The electrical storm had passed. Rain was now falling heavily, and the total absence of wind was ominous. It presaged a hard blow, possibly a storm, at no distant date.