‘What is that down in the corner there, Mr. Colledge?’ said the lieutenant, laughing.
‘Pray, take me on deck, Mr. Dugdale?’ exclaimed Miss Temple haughtily and with temper, and she came to my side and passed her arm through mine.
The swaying of the light hull without top-hamper to steady her so hindered one’s movements by the staggering lurches it flung one into, that it cost me no small effort to steer a fair course with Miss Temple hanging to me, to the cabin steps. I helped her up the ladder, and felt in her arm the shudder that swept through her as she sent a single swift glance at the dead figure at the table.
The moment I emerged I cried out: ‘My God! see there! Why, if we are not quick’—— And putting my head into the doorway again, I roared down the hatch: ‘For heaven’s sake, come on deck, or we shall lose both ships!’
Indeed, all away in the north-west was a white blankness of vapour bearing right down upon the hull, with a long and heavy swell rolling out of it, the heads of which as they came washing from under the base of the thickness were dark with wind. The sky overhead was of a sort of watery ashen colour, going down to the eastern sea-line in a weak, dim blue, so obscure with the complexion of the approaching vaporous mass that the corvette on the left hand and the Indiaman on the right appeared as little more than pallid smudges, with a kind of looming out of their dull, distorted proportions that made them show as though they hung upon the very verge of the ocean. I told Miss Temple to hold to the side of the deck-house to steady herself, and rushed to the quarter. The cutter lay there to the scope of her painter, rising and falling in a manner bewildering to see to one who knew that she had to be entered from these perilously sloping decks. The moment my head was seen, one of the sailors bawled out: ‘The Indiaman’s fired two guns, sir.’
‘Why the deuce,’ I shouted in a passion, ‘didn’t one of you jump aboard to report what was coming? Haul alongside, for God’s sake.’
At this moment the lieutenant appeared, followed by Colledge. He took one look, and came in a bound to the sheer edge of the deck, where the remains of the line of crushed bulwarks stood like fangs. ‘Lively now!’ he cried; ‘hand over hand with it.’
‘We shall be smothered out of sight in a few minutes,’ I exclaimed; ‘shall we be acting wisely in quitting this hull? We may lose both ships in that weather there, and what will there be to do then?’
‘Don’t frighten the lady, sir,’ he answered, turning upon me with a frown. ‘Miss Temple, there is nothing to be alarmed at. We shall get you into the boat simply enough, and the vapour will speedily clear. I know these waters.’
Colledge stood gazing round him, looking horribly frightened. The boat was dragged alongside: one moment she was above the level of the naked edge of the deck; the next she was sliding away out of sight into the hollow, with the wreck rolling heavily off from her.