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<h2> CHAPTER III. TO THE WATER'S EDGE </h2>
<p>It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not that
the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot out
those who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cart shoots
a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-load struggling,
floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and which of us is all
unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; for I saw all this
across an impassable gulf of fire.</p>
<p>The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard of the
flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to the lips of
that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out and up.</p>
<p>Could I jump it there? I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet
across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity. I
drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say,
than because my common sense did not.</p>
<p>Some were watching me, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!" they
screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in token that I
heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding I
noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was
not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a
dead calm.</p>
<p>Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared to move
an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the scorched bulwarks
burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up, desperate with the pain; and,
with my tortured hands spread wide to balance me, I walked those few
yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea and rising
fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by God's grace without mishap.</p>
<p>There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about anything
else that befell upon a night when each moment was more pregnant than the
last. And yet I did think that those who had encouraged me to attempt so
perilous a trick might have welcomed me alive among them; they were
looking at something else already; and this was what it was.</p>
<p>One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had a
bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw him
dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harris appeared
to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for the deep-drawn blast
and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. But we saw the
staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flung next instant
in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn, fired without
effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Next instant a smooth
black cane was raining blow after blow on the man's head. He dropped; the
blows fell thick and heavy as before. He lay wriggling; the Portuguese
struck and struck until he lay quite still; then we saw Joaquin Santos
kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the still thing's clothes, as a man
might wipe his boots.</p>
<p>Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as I
say, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. This last
had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were at the
starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat.</p>
<p>She lay safely on the water: how we thanked our gods for that! Lower and
lower sank her gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no more care than
the Gadarene swine whose fate we courted. Discipline, order, method,
common care, we brought none of these things with us from our floating
furnace; but we fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the bottom of
the long-boat we fought again.</p>
<p>And yet she held us all! All, that is, but a terror-stricken few, who lay
along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or three more whom
we left fatally hesitating in the forechains: all but the selfish savages
who had been the first to perish in the pinnace, and one distracted couple
who had thrown their children into the kindly ocean, and jumped in after
them out of their torment, locked for ever in each other's arms.</p>
<p>Yes! I saw more things on that starry night, by that blood-red glare, than
I have told you in their order, and more things than I shall tell you now.
Blind would I gladly be for my few remaining years, if that night's
horrors could be washed from these eyes for ever. I have said so much,
however, that in common candor I must say one thing more. I have spoken of
selfish savages. God help me and forgive me! For by this time I was one
myself.</p>
<p>In the long-boat we cannot have been less than thirty; the exact number no
man will ever know. But we shoved off without mischance; the chief mate
had the tiller; the third mate the boat-hook; and six or eight oars were
at work, in a fashion, as we plunged among the great smooth sickening
mounds and valleys of fathomless ink.</p>
<p>Scarcely were we clear when the foremast dropped down on the fastenings,
dashing the jib-boom into the water with its load of demented human
beings. The mainmast followed by the board before we had doubled our
distance from the wreck. Both trailed to port, where we could not see
them; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary grandeur, her
flapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so that
they were stamped very sharply upon the black add starry sky. But the
whole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and horror.
The fire now filled the entire waist of the vessel, and the noise of it
was as the rumble and roar of a volcano. As for the light, I declare that
it put many a star clean out, and dimmed the radiance of all the rest, as
it flooded the sea for miles around, and a sea of molten glass reflected
it. My gorge rose at the long, low billows-sleek as black satin—lifting
and dipping in this ghastly glare. I preferred to keep my eyes upon the
little ship burning like a tar barrel as the picture grew. But presently I
thanked God aloud: there was the gig swimming like a beetle over the
bloodshot rollers in our wake.</p>
<p>In our unspeakable gladness at being quit of the ship, some minutes passed
before we discovered that the long-boat was slowly filling. The water was
at our ankles before a man of us cried out, so fast were our eyes to the
poor lost Lady Jermyn. Then all at once the ghastly fact dawned upon us;
and I think it was the mate himself who burst out crying like a child. I
never ascertained, however, for I had kicked off my shoes and was busy
baling with them. Others were hunting for the leak. But the mischief was
as subtle as it was mortal—as though a plank had started from end to
end. Within and without the waters rose equally—then lay an instant
level with our gunwales—then swamped us, oh! so slowly, that I
thought we were never going to sink. It was like getting inch by inch into
your tub; I can feel it now, creeping, crawling up my back. "It's coming!
O Christ!" muttered one as it came; to me it was a downright relief to be
carried under at last.</p>
<p>But then, thank God, I have always been a strong swimmer. The water was
warm and buoyant, and I came up like a cork, as I knew I should. I shook
the drops from my face, and there were the sweet stars once more; for many
an eye they had gone Out for ever; and there the burning wreck.</p>
<p>A man floundered near me, in a splutter of phosphorescence. I tried to
help him, and in an instant he had me wildly round the neck. In the end I
shook him off, poor devil, to his death. And he was the last I tried to
aid: have I not said already what I was become?</p>
<p>In a little an oar floated my way: I threw my arms across it and gripped
it with my chin as I swam. It relieved me greatly. Up and down I rode
among the oily black hillocks; I was down when there was a sudden flare as
though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few heads bobbing and a few
arms waving frantically around me. At the same instant a terrific
detonation split the ears; and when I rose on the next bald billow, where
the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but a red-hot
spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then left a
blackness through which every star shone with redoubled brilliance.</p>
<p>And now right and left splashed falling missiles; a new source of danger
or of temporary respite; to me, by a merciful Providence, it proved the
latter.</p>
<p>Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash right in front of me. A few
more yards, and my brains had floated with the spume. As it was, the oar
was dashed from under my armpits; in another moment they had found a more
solid resting-place.</p>
<p>It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In this calm
it might float for days. I climbed upon the bars-and the whole cage rolled
over on top of me.</p>
<p>Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hen-coop had righted
itself; so now I climbed up again, but this time very slowly and gingerly;
the balance was undisturbed, and I stretched myself cautiously along the
bars on my stomach. A good idea immediately occurred to me. I had jumped
as a matter of course into the flannels which one naturally wears in the
tropics. To their lightness I already owed my life, but the common
cricket-belt which was part of the costume was the thing to which I owe it
most of all. Loosening this belt a little, as I tucked my toes tenaciously
under the endmost bar, I undid and passed the two ends under one of the
middle bars, fastening the clasp upon the other side. If I capsized now,
well, we might go to the bottom together; otherwise the hen-coop and I
should not part company in a hurry; and I thought, I felt, that she would
float.</p>
<p>Worn out as I was, and comparatively secure for the moment, I will not say
that I slept; but my eyes closed, and every fibre rested, as I rose and
slid with the smooth, long swell. Whether I did indeed hear voices,
curses, cries, I cannot say positively to this day. I only know that I
raised my head and looked sharply all ways but the way I durst not look
for fear of an upset. And, again, I thought I saw first a tiny flame, and
then a tinier glow; and as my head drooped, and my eyes closed again, I
say I thought I smelt tobacco; but this, of course, was my imagination
supplying all the links from one.</p>
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