‘I don’t know,’ I answered, trembling like a half-frozen kitten as I watched the smoke, and thought of what must have come to us, if yonder barque’s approach had been delayed!
‘I suppose there’ll be gunpowder aboard?’ continued the square man. ‘Pull, lads! If a bust-up happens, it’ll find us too near at this.’
The men bent their backs, and the sharp-ended little boat went smoking through the quiet rippling waters. Nothing more was said. The square man, whose rugged, weather-blackened face preserved an inimitable air of amazement, eyed us askant, particularly running his gaze over Miss Temple’s attire, and letting it rest upon her rings. The toil of the seamen kept them silent. For my part, I was too overcome to utter a word. The passion of delight excited by our deliverance—that is to say, as signified by our rescue by the barque—was paralysed by the horror with which I viewed the growing denseness of the smoke rising from the hull. She was on fire! Great heaven, what would have been our fate—without a boat, without the materials for the construction of a raft—with no more than a few staves of casks to hold by! Such a sea-brigand as the wreck had been in her day was sure to have a liberal store of gunpowder stowed somewhere below: in all probability, in a magazine in the hold under her cabin. What, then, would there have been for us to do? We must either have sought death by leaping overboard, or awaited the horrible annihilation of an explosion!
Miss Temple’s eyes were large and her lips pale and her face bloodless, as though she were in a swoon. She was seeing how it was, and how it must have been with us, and she seemed smitten to the motionlessness of a statue by the perception as she sat by my side staring at the receding hull.
We swept to the little gangway ladder that had been dropped over the rail, and with some difficulty I assisted the girl over the side, swinging by the man-rope with one hand and supporting her waist with the other. The man who had hailed us stood at the gangway. I instantly went up to him with my hand outstretched.
‘Sir,’ said I, ‘you are the captain, no doubt. I thank you for this deliverance, for this preservation of our lives, for this rescue from what now must have proved a horrible doom of fire.’
He took my hand and held it without answering, whilst he continued to stare at me with an intentness that in a very few moments astonished and embarrassed me.
‘What is your name, sir?’ he presently said.
‘Laurence Dugdale,’ I answered.
‘Mate of an Indiaman, I think you said, sir?’