Next instant there was a dull shock throughout the ship; a thrill that ran through her planks into the very soles of one’s feet, while there arose shrieks and shouts as from three-score throats under the bows, and a most lamentable and terrifying noise of wood-splintering, of canvas tearing, of liberated sails flogging the wind. I bounded to the weather-rail, and saw a large hull of some eighty tons wholly dismasted—a wild scene of wreck and ruin to the flash of the moon at that moment shining down out of a clear space of sky—gliding past into our wake. The dark object seemed filled with men, and the yells left me in no doubt that she was a Frenchman—a large three-masted lugger, as I had supposed her.
In an instant our ship was in an uproar. There is nothing in language to express the noise and excitement. To begin with, our helm having been put down, we had come round into the wind, and lay pitching heavily with sails slatting and thundering, yards creaking, rigging straining. The sailors rushed to and fro. All discipline for the moment seemed to have gone overboard. The captain had come tumbling up on deck, and was calling orders to the mate, who re-echoed them in loud bawlings to the quarter-deck and forecastle. Lanterns were got up and shown over the rail, and by the light of them you saw the figures of the seamen speeding from rope to rope and hauling upon the gear, their gruff, harsh chorusings rising high above the terrified chatter of the passengers—many of whom had rushed up on deck barely clothed—high also above the storming and shrilling of the wind, the deep notes of angry waters warring at our bows, and the distracting shaking and beating of the sails.
But a few orders delivered by Mr. Prance, whose tongue was as a trumpet in a moment like this, acted upon the ship as the sympathetic hand of a horseman upon a restive terrified thoroughbred.
‘Haul up the mainsail—fore clew garnets—back maintopsail yard—tail on to the weather-braces and round in handsomely. Mr. Cocker (this was addressed to the second-mate, who had tumbled up with the rest of the watch below on feeling the thump the Countess Ida had given herself, and on hearing the uproar that followed)—burn a flare—smartly, if you please! Also get blue lights and rockets up.’
I ran aft to see if the vessel that we had wrecked was anywhere about. The moon was shining brilliantly down upon the sea at that time, and the swollen Channel waters were lifting their black heights into creaming peaks in an atmosphere of delicate silver haze, that yet suffered the eye to penetrate to the dark confines of the horizon. The wake of the planet was a long throbbing line of angry broken splendour in the south; but the tail of it seemed to stream fair to the point of sea into which the lugger had veered, and I was confident that if she were afloat I should see her.
‘Who is that to leeward there?’ called the captain from the other side of the wheel in a tone of worry and irritation.
‘Mr. Dugdale,’ I replied.
‘Oh, beg pardon, I’m sure,’ he exclaimed; ‘do you see anything of the vessel that we’ve run down?’
‘Nothing,’ I responded.
‘She must have foundered,’ said he; ‘yet though I listened, I heard no cries after the wreck had once fairly settled away from us.’