They had inoculated me a second time that day, and I lay in a hammock between decks, burnt with a slow fever. I turned and turned; but I could not sleep. There was not a breath of air. I saw the old sentry relieved, and the new man take his seat beside the lantern to read and nod. The dark was full of the little noises of sleepers—rustlings, strange breathings, short-lived groans, jumbled snatches of talk. Sometimes these noises died while I dozed, next I would grow wide awake. Heartily I wished the night gone.
I forget what I thought about—nothing, it may be. I remember waking and dozing, dozing and waking, that is all. Finally the night wore on towards morning, and the fever began to wear out of me. It seemed at last I was wooing sleep.
With a great roar of waters, an unbelievable shock, and a grinding of timbers, the Uranus struck us astern, came on, and struck us again amidships. With a roar of waters, she fell back into the dark. An instant of silence came, and hard on it followed the frantic hooting of the siren, and the sentry came falling down the companion, the lantern tumbling atop of him. We were left in the dark.
The shock of collision had set every hammock wildly swinging and had left me wide awake. In one movement my legs were over the side of the hammock, and I had pulled down the lifebelt from the rack above. All over the troop-deck you heard men waking up in a hurry, clinging to the hammocks on either side to steady themselves, pulling themselves into upright positions, and reaching out for lifebelts. There was a sense of great fear in us. For as long as it takes to tell no one spoke, next voices piped out all over the place.
“Collision, boys, collision!” someone called out. And someone else cried, “It’s a dinkum collision this time!” And a score of other voices were exclaiming. It was very dark, so much so that almost nothing could be discovered; but there were the sounds of men reaching about or jumping on to the tables, and the quick patter of many naked feet on the floor. In no time men streamed up the companion, fastening lifebelts as they went or carrying them under their arms.
I had wasted no time in jumping on to the ground; but I paused a minute to pull on my boots and get an overcoat, for I liked little the idea of a voyage in an open boat in pyjamas. I paused no more than a moment, but at the bottom of the companion I found myself on the outside edge of an excited crowd surging in a single direction.
The night was very calm, and as soon as the ship had ceased to quiver she became quite steady. Her engines had stopped; but as yet there was no list or anything of that kind. It was the darkness and the sense of being trapped below that made one hold one’s breath. Men who had slept on deck were trying to get down for their belts, and we in much larger numbers were pushing up. There was a jam in the tide. You heard men calling out, “Keep to the right, keep to the right!” or “Steady on there with your blasted pushing!” Then I was caught in the flood and carried quite slowly up the companion, and vomited forth on to the open deck.
Now either it had rained, or the dews were very heavy, or the crew had been in act of hosing down the deck; but the first thing I found coming out into the open was that the deck ran water. “By Jove, she’s going quickly,” thought I! The place was crowded with men moving fast in all directions; but I turned sharp to the right and got a footing on the second companion, leading to the upper deck. The same crowd pushed up and down here; but I was caught again and emptied out on top as had happened before. I had been behindhand down below, and up here I found many of the men formed up before their boat stations, lifebelts on, and the officer in command calling the roll. I hurried past to our own collision station, and found most of the Staff there, and Sands in charge, quite cool and on the bounce as best became him.
He eyed me coldly as I fell into line. “Lake, you are too slow to catch your shadow! Silence there in the ranks! You fellows ought to know by this time there is to be absolute silence. The next man who speaks will go under arrest.”