‘Think—if we were on her now!’ I muttered to Miss Temple. She hid her face.
‘Was there any valleyables aboard her, Mr. Dugdale, d’ye know?’ said the captain.
‘I cannot tell you,’ I answered in a voice subdued by emotion; ‘I did not search the sleeping-berths. There was little enough in her hold.’
‘Ye should have crept away down in the run,’ said he; ‘that’s where the chaps which peopled her would stow their booty if they had any. If I’d known she’d been a privateersman—— How came ye to set her on fire?’
‘My signal burnt through her deck, so I was informed by that gentleman there,’ I replied, indicating the square man, who stood a little way from us.
‘Was that so, Mr. Lush?’ cried the captain.
‘Was what so?’ asked Mr. Lush. The captain explained. ‘Well, I dunno,’ answered the other; ‘there was fire in the hold when I looked down, and it seemed to me as if flakes of it was falling through the deck. But what does it signify? Wood ain’t cast-iron, and if ye makes a flare upon a timber deck, why, then what I says is, stand by!’
‘Oh look, Mr. Dugdale!’ shrieked Miss Temple at that moment, tossing her arms in horror, and standing with her hands-upraised, as though in a posture of calling down a curse upon the distant thing.
My eye was on the wreck, as hers had been, and I saw it all. There was a huge crimson flash, as though some volcanic head had belched in fire; daylight as it was, the stretch of clouds above and beyond the wreck glared out in a dull rusty red to the amazing stream of flame; a volume of smoke white as steam, shaped like a balloon, and floating solid to the sight, slowly rose like some phenomenal emanation from the secret depths of the ocean. There followed the sullen, deep-throated blast of the explosion. Captain Braine snatched a telescope from the skylight and levelled it, and after peering a little, thrust the glass into my hand.
‘See if you can find out where she’s gone to,’ said he with a singular grin, in which his eyes did not participate.