“All right, I suppose,” thought the Count, and he went aft, while the sailor descended, and was soon again fast asleep. The Count heard a noise such as rope makes when running over wood. Presently he observed that the objects, dimly seen through the gloom of night, were moving. “What can have happened?” he thought. Faster and faster they moved. The vessel appeared to be in a rapid current.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! what is happening?” he cried out; and he shouted to the skipper and the man forward, but neither answered him. Presently the vessel struck against the side of a house which rose out of the water, then against a pier, then she bounded off, then once more she came with tremendous force against another house, which appeared to be a store, carrying away her bowsprit. “She will go to the bottom, and I shall be drowned,” thought the Count; and he scrambled up the rigging just as the head of the mast poked
its way in at a large opening in the wall. Climbing the shrouds of a vessel was a feat the Count had never before accomplished, and was very contrary to his habits; but he exerted himself to the utmost. The unpleasant recollection came upon him, as he was doing so, that these were the shrouds which had been severed when the ship ran into the sloop, and he feared, naturally, that they would give way at the very moment that he was upon them. This made him climb the faster. Now, as the vessel heeled over, his feet touched the wall of the building, and he feared that he might be jammed against it. The darkness prevented him from seeing clearly what was befalling the hull, but his impression was that it was going down into the deep canal, and that the skipper and the remaining portion of his crew would be drowned; but he had no desire to share their fate, and was utterly unable to help them. He shouted, however, loud enough to arouse them out of any ordinary slumber; but the schiedam they had drunk had so completely lulled their senses that they heard not his shouts, or the bumping of the vessel against the wall. He therefore continued his ascent till he reached the top of the mast, when, getting hold of a beam which projected from the opening in the building, he hauled himself up. Just as he did so the mast cracked; the vessel with a jerk heeled over to the
opposite side; he was left clinging to the beam while she was borne away by the tide into the darkness. Again he shouted to try and arouse the skipper, but no human voice replied to his cries.
Chapter Seven.
The Count felt about with his feet till they touched the floor of the loft into which he had scrambled. “Here I am landed at last, at all events,” he said to himself; “but this, though dry enough, is not a pleasant place in which to pass the night; and besides, my friend Stilkin will be searching for me, and be very much alarmed at not finding the vessel, or if he does find her—supposing she has not gone to the bottom—when he discovers that I have absconded. What can I do? I must try and get down into the street, and then, perhaps, I shall meet him and relieve his anxiety. I wish that I had a light, though, as I shall run the risk of tumbling down some trap-door and breaking my neck. I must move cautiously. This appears to be a lumber loft of some sort; it cannot contain valuable merchandise, or the opening through which I made an entrance would have been closed. Well, I am of opinion that this is the least pleasant of my adventures.” The Count stopped. Looking back, he observed the outline of an opening through which came a small amount of light—such light as exists at night. This assisted him to direct his course across the floor of the loft: he moved cautiously, for every moment he knocked his feet against pieces of plank, and broken chests, and casks, and heaps of old sails, and fragments of rope piled up to be turned into oakum, and broken chains, and scraps of iron, and worn-out brooms and brushes. “I suppose there is an outlet somewhere, though I cannot yet distinguish it,” he said to himself. “These things have probably been brought up from below; but suppose they have been only hoisted in through the window, I shall be imprisoned as effectually as if I had been shut in by bars and bolts, for I certainly cannot make my escape through the opening by which I entered; I should only fall into the canal. Dear me! dear me! this is unpleasant. I wish that I had stayed at home in my old castle. However, wishes are vain things. I must try to get out somehow or other.” Again he began to grope about, feeling with his hands and feet, but in spite of all efforts could discover no outlet. “Probably, after all, it will be wiser to sit down and wait till daylight,” he thought. He accordingly sat himself down on a pile of rope, but he had not sat there long before he heard strange noises, a clattering and clambering of some creatures or other, and presently two or three came bounding over his feet.