Here I found myself against the water casks, close against the cargo, and just beyond was the bulk-head behind which the boatswain had hidden while Stevens bored the holes.
Carefully throwing the light over the walls, I presently perceived the plugs or ends of the broom-stick protruding; and going close to them I found they were perfectly tight, that no sign of moisture was visible around them.
It may seem strange that this discovery vexed and alarmed me.
And yet this was the case.
It would have made me perfectly easy in my mind to have seen the water gushing in through one of these holes, because not only would a few blows of the mallet have set it to rights, but it would have acquainted me with the cause of the small increase of water in the hold.
Now that cause must be sought elsewhere.
Was it possible that the apprehensions I had felt each time the ship had taken one of her tremendous headers were to be realised?—that she had strained a butt or started a bolt in some ungetatable place?
Here where I stood, deep in the ship, below the water-line, it was frightful to hear her straining, it was frightful to feel her motion.
The whole place resounded with groans and cries, as if the hold had been filled with wounded men.
What bolts, though forged by a Cyclops, could resist that horrible grinding?—could hold together the immense weight which the sea threw up as a child a ball, leaving parts of it poised in air, out of water, unsustained save by the structure that contained it, then letting the whole hull fall with a hollow, horrible crash into a chasm between the waves, beating it first here, then there, with blows the force of which was to be calculated in hundreds of tons?