Then, in the middle of one unforgettable, fateful night, was heard aboard The British Queen, and heard in every conceivable tone of human and animal terror, fear, and anguish—the dreadful cry of Fire!
LXXIX
Upon a fine June morning some eight days later, Jowell, in his dingy office in The Poultry, London, in the narrow alley of sordid houses hard by the Banking House of Lubbock, received a telegram from the Admiralty. A moment later the gray-faced Chobley, busy in his little glass case opening out of the office where the seven pallid clerks bent over ledgers, was summoned by a strangled shriek that came from the whistle of the speaking-tube, and entered the Contractor’s private sanctum. A moment later he rang the bell.
For a dreadful, white-and-blue faced jabbering Something that wore the clothing of Thompson Jowell had come staggering at the manager, shaking a slip of flimsy yellow paper; and, jabbering out an unintelligible word or so, had fallen down in a fit.
“Fetch a doctor from somewhere, will you!” said Chobley to the sea-green Standish’s pallid successor, as he knelt over the bulky, stertorously-breathing body that sprawled upon the shabby ink-stained carpet, fumbling at its shirt-collar stud. He had been enlightened by a glance at the telegraphic message from Whitehall, and added, working away:
“There has been bad work at sea. The forage aboard The British Queen worked and took fire—at least, the message says so. Ship was a blazing hulk in half-an-hour from the outbreak—they took to the boats, such of ’em as they could get at. A Dundee brig bound for Lisbon picked up three of ’em—a Southampton-bound barque and a schooner for Port au Prince, St. Domingo, overhauled the rest. Eighty-nine souls were saved, twenty-three drowned or burned—including the Veterinary Surgeon and the Colonel of the Regiment. And all the horses except one—I should like to know how that one managed to save himself,” said Chobley rather gruesomely, “from being frizzled with the rest in the after-hold?”
Avid of more horrors, Standish’s successor queried:
“And Mr. Mortimer?”
“Why,” returned the manager, still busying himself about the neck of the prone, insensible figure, “Mr. Mortimer has been picked up, with the rest, aboard the ship’s boats. It’s the shock of hearing that his son was in danger lays the Governor snoring and choking here. For The British Queen and everything aboard of her was insured—pretty heavily insured; and there’s no loss to us resulting from the casualty—rather the reverse!”