'Not yet, sir, not yet, sir,' roared Captain Burke, holding him off with both hands out. 'See to the ladies. Let them shift their clothes. This water will drain off quickly. Give them brandy and take some. Mary,' he shouted, 'the ship's alive, but if she's to remain so I must see to her,' saying which he went up the steps, closing the companion-way behind him.
Mr. Owen splashed and staggered after him. He ran up the companion steps bawling, 'Don't lock us up down here,' and tried the doors, but was unable to open them.
'Why has he shut us up?' I cried wildly, for this imprisonment was the most dreadful passage of all; I felt as if I should suffocate.
'He's afraid of more water pouring down and considers we're safer here than on deck. He'll not leave us to drown. He'll not forget we're here,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke.
'He may be swept overboard, and the others will forget us.'
'Come to your cabin and change your boots and dress. No more water is coming in, you see. What is that noise? Hark! Oh, it is the clanging of the pumps. How fearfully sudden! But it is always so at sea. Oh, my poor husband! Come, Miss Marie, come and change, or this will be giving you your death,' and grasping me by the arm the dear, poor, good creature led me towards my cabin.
As we stepped, moving very slowly with frequent abrupt halts and mutual clingings, for the jump of the dismantled hull from hollow to peak, her helpless beamwise lurch from summit to valley, were a brain-sickness in sensation, Mr. Owen came out of the pantry holding a bottle of brandy and a glass. He bid me take a small glassful. I told him no, and Mrs. Burke said it was no time to think of drinking. It might be that we should be called upon very soon to save our lives, and every one would want the best of his wits.
'The captain recommended a draught of the spirit, and so do I,' said Mr. Owen, reeling in the doorway with the motion of the ship and submitting a figure which I must have laughed at, at a time less appalling, with his short legs set apart, their shape defined by the soaked small clothes which hung like loose plaster upon them, his bushy mass of minute curls over either ear seeming to enlarge like the puff from the mouth of a cannon even as the eye rested upon them, a bottle in one hand, a wineglass in the other, and his face as pale as tallow.
Mrs. Burke made no answer, and we gained our cabin.