“He is a Hindoo. He is a very intelligent man in his own language and among his own people. I have heard my father say so. I fear he sacrificed his caste by attending on the captain—and on me.”
“But he saved you from the wreck?” I urged, keeping her to the story of the wreck.
“Yes. When the boilers blew up (the steamship had been afire all night) Dao Singh ran into the cabin and hurried my ayer and me out on the deck. Some men were lowering a boat. It was damaged some.
“Singh tried to put the ayer and me in it. But I believe she must have fallen overboard, or been pushed overboard. There was much confusion. I was scared and cried. When I understood a little better about matters, we were in the boat, drifting without oars, and the Galland, all a mass of flames, seemed to be going down, stern-foremost, under the sea.”
Chapter XVIII
In Which I Become Better Acquainted With Phillis Duane
There was little more to be learned, it seemed, about the actual tragedy of the burned steamship. How the fire had been started she could not say. She had been asleep. Her nurse, or ayer awoke her at the height of the stampede of passengers for the deck. Whether the officers and bulk of the crew had been killed by the explosion, or had abandoned the ship and her human freight, she did not know.
The Galland had been some months on the voyage, having circumnavigated the world, when Phillis Duane and her friends boarded her at Calcutta. She had touched at Chinese ports, and again at Tahiti. She was a British tramp steamship and Phillis seemed to think that her home port was Edinburgh. It might be that the lost girl’s friends were Scotch, and that the friends she traveled with were likewise Scotch, and that is why they had selected the ill-fated Galland to get home on.
“Do you suppose that nigger knows?” demanded Captain Bowditch, of Mr. Gates, in a whisper.
“Doubtful if you get anything out of him,” returned the mate.