To do this he had unwisely removed the rocket from its stick, and, unfortunately, he fastened it in the chimney upside down. Having done so, he fumbled in his pocket, the darkness being intense, for his matches, and applied the light underneath in the usual place. But the rocket being upside down he of course failed to set it off, and then he unluckily tried the other end, which was uppermost, with the disastrous result, as my English informant described it, that 'the hexplosion blowed him clean out of the galley.'
'Blowed him!' said I, unconsciously adopting my friend's expression, 'where?'
'Why,' said he, 'hout of the galley into the lee scuppers.'
'Was the poor fellow much hurt?'
'Hurt! Bless you! not he. But he kept shouting like forty blue murders!'
'What did he say?'
'Well,' he replied, 'he was that scared and that choked with soot, as ever was, that all he could say was—I'm dead! I'm dead! I'm dead!'
The position of the vessel was now very serious; she was going so fast astern towards the breakers and the land that after the lifeboat anchored ahead of and close to her she could hardly keep abreast of the dragging vessel by paying out her cable as fast as possible. Roberts and Adams, and in all five of the lifeboatmen, sprang on board of her as she rolled in the pitchy night.
They sprang, as the lifeboat went up and the ship came down, over the yawning chasm, on the chance of gripping the shrouds, and some of them rolled over and actually and literally, as they were carried off their feet, had to swim on the decks of the labouring vessel.
The captain of the vessel could not get on board in the same way, and though they passed a line round his waist it was a good half-hour before they could get him up the steep side.