CHAPTER SEVEN
A fiery ordeal
The chief and second mates had, when named by Captain Staunton, gone down upon the main deck; and upon the conclusion of the skipper’s address they at once marshalled their watches and led them to their proper stations. The third mate, boatswain, sailmaker, cook, steward, and apprentices were embodied with the chief mate’s gang, part of whom were told off to work the force-pump which was to feed the tank of the fire-engine, while the remainder were formed into line along the deck to pass buckets to the seat of the fire. The fire-engine, which had luckily been frequently in use at fire-drill, was in perfect order, and the men knowing exactly what to do, it was rigged and ready for action, with tank filled, the hose screwed on and laid along the deck, in a remarkably short time.
Captain Staunton, on seeing that the men were cool and thoroughly under control, had immediately gone below again to rejoin the carpenter, whom he had left busily engaged in seeking the locality of the fire, of the actual existence of which he had no manner of doubt; indeed one had need only to go to the companion and breathe the heated and pungent atmosphere which ascended thence to have resolved any doubt he might have entertained upon the subject.
“Oh, how dreadful!” exclaimed Blanche, turning with white quivering lips to Evelin, as the skipper disappeared below; “do you think there really is fire, Mr Evelin?”
“It is quite impossible to say,” answered Evelin calmly, keeping to himself his own convictions; “but if there is, it cannot have yet gained much hold, and I daresay a half an hour or so of vigorous work with the fire-engine will effectually drown it out. And if it does not; if, looking at the matter in its worst possible light, the fire should after all get the upper hand and drive us out of the ship, the night is fine, and the water smooth enough to enable us easily and comfortably to take to the boats. Then the boats themselves are amply sufficient to take everybody without crowding; they are in perfect order and the best equipped boats I have ever seen; so that let what will happen, I think we need not alarm ourselves in the least.
“I think, however,” he added, the other passengers having gathered round him, “that it could do no possible harm, and might be of advantage, supposing that the worst happens, if you ladies were to go to your berths and make up a package of your warmest clothing, together with any valuables you may have with you, so as to be in perfect readiness to leave the ship, if need be. But take matters quietly, I entreat you; for I sincerely hope it will prove that there is no necessity for any such decided step.”
The two girls turned away, and went together to the cabin which they jointly occupied. Mrs Staunton had already followed her husband below; and Dale also hurried away, loudly bewailing his ill-luck in ever having embarked on board such an unfortunate vessel.
“For heaven’s sake follow him, Fortescue, and stop his clamour!” exclaimed Lance; “he is enough to demoralise an entire regiment, let alone a small ship’s company like this.”
Rex nodded, and followed his partner; seizing him by the arm and leading him aft, instead of allowing him to go below as he evidently intended:
Just then the carpenter came on deck, and advancing to the break of the poop, shouted—
“Pass along the hose, boys, and start the engine. There is a spark or two of something smouldering down below, but we’ll soon have it out.”
The men stationed at the engine gave a ringing cheer and, one of them starting an inspiriting shanty, began at once to work away at the handles.
“Well, this here’s a pretty go, ain’t it?” observed Brook, addressing himself to Evelin as the two stood together at the break of the poop, watching the men at work.
“A most unfortunate circumstance,” replied Lance. “Luckily there are no signs whatever of anything approaching to panic; and if all keep as cool as they are at present, we may hope to get out of this difficulty one way or the other without mishap. You seem tolerably collected, Mr Brook; so perhaps there may be no harm in telling you that I fear matters are much more serious than they at present appear to be. All day today the saloon has appeared to me to be extraordinarily hot; and the presence of fire in the ship now sufficiently accounts for it. And if it has been burning for some time, it may prove to have obtained so strong a hold as to defy mastery. In such a case it behoves each one of us to set an example of quiet self-possession to all the rest. You behaved so nobly the other day during the gale that I think we may depend on you not to fail in that respect.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” returned Brook. “I don’t believe in being put out about any think; I’m ready to help anywheres; and I’d begin at once if I knowed where I could do any good. And if the ‘governor’ (referring presumably to Mr Dale) makes any fuss, I shall roll ’im up in a blanket like a parcel and take care of ’im myself.”
A thin vapour of smoke was by this time rising from the companion, accompanied by a strong and quite unmistakable smell of fire; and in a minute or two more Captain Staunton, in his shirt sleeves, appeared on deck and called forward for more water.
“There is rather more of it than we at first thought, lads,” he said; “but stick steadily to your work and we’ll conquer it yet.”
The gang at the fire-engine was rapidly relieved; a fresh shanty was struck up; the chain of men with buckets got to work; and the quickened clank clank of the engine handles showed that the crew were still confident and determined.
“Now is our time,” exclaimed Lance to Brook; “cut in here,” as a rather wide gap in the chain of bucket-men revealed itself just at the head of the saloon staircase; and in another moment both were hard at work, with their coats off, passing buckets.
Another twenty minutes might have elapsed when Captain Staunton and the carpenter staggered together up the saloon staircase to the deck, gasping for breath, their clothes and skin grimy with smoke, and the perspiration streaming down their faces.
“Send two fresh hands below, if you please, Mr Bowles,” shouted the skipper; “and you, lads, drop your buckets, and lend a hand here to cut some holes in the deck; the fire is spreading forward, and we must keep it to this end of the ship if possible.”
Two of the most determined of the crew at once stepped forward and volunteered to go below; Captain Staunton nodded his permission, and led them to the scene of their labours; while the chain of men who had been passing buckets along the deck dropped them, and, under the carpenter’s supervision, at once commenced the task of cutting through the deck. The smoke was by this time pouring in volumes up the companion and through the skylight. Lance had been too busy to take much notice of this whilst engaged in passing the buckets; but now that a respite came he had time to look about him. He saw the great dun cloud of smoke surging out of the companion and streaming away to leeward; and he saw indistinctly through it at intervals a small group gathered together aft by the weather taffrail. He thought he would join this group for a moment, if only to ascertain whether the girls had succeeded in securing such things as they were most anxious to save; and he sauntered toward them in his usual easy and deliberate manner. As he drew near Violet rose and said—
“Oh, Mr Evelin! I am so glad you are come; I was beginning to feel quite anxious about Blanche—but where is she; I do not see her with you?”
“She is not with me, Miss Dudley,” answered Lance; “what led you to suppose she would be?”
“Not with you! Oh, Mr Evelin, where is she, then? If she is not with you she must still be in her cabin. I stayed there until the smoke was too thick to see or breathe any longer, and then I came on deck. I spoke to her, urging her to come also, and receiving no reply thought she had left without my noticing it; but she is not here anywhere.”
The latter part of this speech never reached Lance’s ears, for, upon fully realising that Blanche—“his own sweet darling,” as he had called her in his inmost thoughts a thousand times—was missing, he darted to the companion-way and plunged down the stairs, three or four at a time, into the blinding pungent suffocating
smoke which rushed momentarily in more and more dense volumes up through the opening.
On reaching the foot of the staircase, he found that several of the planks had been pulled up to allow the men tending the hose to get below the saloon floor and approach as near as possible to the seat of the fire. So dense was the smoke just here that it was only by the merest chance he escaped falling headlong into the abyss. Catching sight, however, of the aperture just in time to spring across it, he did so; and glancing back for an instant on reaching the other side, he saw a broad expanse of glowing white-hot bales of wool, and, dimly through the acrid smoke and steam, the forms of the men who were plying the engine hose.
Groping his way into the saloon, which was by this time so full of smoke that he could barely distinguish through it a feeble glimmer from the cabin lamp, he made his way in the direction of the state-room appropriated to Blanche and Violet. The smoke got into his eyes and made them water; into his throat and made him cough violently; into his lungs, producing an overpowering sense of suffocation, and impressing unmistakably upon him the necessity for rapidity and decision of movement. Blind, giddy, breathless, he staggered onward, groping for the handle of the state-room door. At length he found it, wrenched the door open, and rapidly felt with hands and feet about the floor and in each berth. No one there. Where then could Blanche be? She was not on deck, and it was hardly probable she could have fallen overboard. Then as he hastily began the search anew his foot kicked against something on the floor, which he at once picked up. It was a boot—a man’s boot unmistakably, from its size and weight. This at once satisfied him that in the obscurity he had groped his way into the wrong state-room; and he must prosecute his search further.
But he was suffocating. Already his brain began to reel; there was a loud humming in his ears; his eyes ached and felt as though they would burst out of their sockets; and he found his strength ebbing away like water. Should he at once prosecute his search further? That seemed physically impossible. But if Blanche were in that fatal atmosphere she must soon die, if not dead already. And if he left the cabin to obtain a breath of fresh air was he not likely to go astray again, and lose still more precious time? No; the search must be proceeded with at once; and, reeling like a drunken man, Lance felt for the state-room door, staggered into the saloon, and felt along the bulkhead for the handle of the next door. Oh, heavens! what a search that was. His head felt as though it would burst; he gasped for breath, and inhaled nothing but hot pungent smoke; the saloon seemed to be miles instead of yards in length. Thank God! at last; the handle is found and turned, and the door flung open. Lance, with the conviction that unless he can escape in a very few seconds he will die, gropes wildly round and into the berths. Ah! what is this? Something coiled-up at the foot of the bottom berth. A human body! A woman! Lance grasps it tightly in his arms; stumbles out through the door with it, along the saloon, through the passage. A roaring as of a thousand thunders is in his ears; stars innumerable dance before his eyes; he sees as in a dream the yawning gulf in the floor; a broad glare of fierce white light reels madly to and fro before him; a confused sound of hoarse voices strikes upon his ear; he feels that the end is come—that he is dying; but with a last supreme effort he staggers up the saloon staircase to the deck, turns instinctively to windward out of the smoke, and with his precious burden still tightly clasped in his arms, falls prostrate and senseless to the deck.
Rex Fortescue, who had been present when Violet spoke to Lance of Blanche’s absence, and who had witnessed the hasty departure of his friend upon his perilous search, was at the head of the companion, on his way below, having grown anxious at Lance’s prolonged absence, when the latter reappeared on deck; and assistance having been hastily summoned, the pair who had so nearly met their deaths from suffocation were, with some little difficulty, at length restored to consciousness.
Meanwhile, it had become apparent to Captain Staunton that the fire was of a much more serious character than he had anticipated, and that it was every minute assuming more formidable proportions. He therefore at length decided, as a precautionary measure, to get the boats into the water without further delay. He was anxious more particularly about the launch and pinnace, as these boats were stowed over the main hatch and would have to be hoisted out by means of yard-tackles. This would be a long and difficult operation, the ship being under jury-rig; and should the fire attack the heel of the main-mast before these craft were in the water, the two largest and safest boats in the ship might be seriously damaged, if not destroyed, in the process of launching, or perhaps might defy the unaided efforts of the crew to launch them at all. There would be no difficulty about the other boats, as they could be lowered from the davits.
The mates were busy superintending and directing the efforts of their respective gangs towards the extinguishing of the fire; Captain Staunton, therefore, after a moment or two of anxious deliberation, confided to Bob the important duty of provisioning and launching the boats, giving him as assistants the cook, steward, and two able seamen, and soliciting also the aid of the male passengers.
Now it happened that the Galatea’s boats were somewhat different in character from the boats usually to be found on board ship. Captain Staunton had, when quite a lad, been compelled, with the rest of the ship’s company of which he was then a junior and very unimportant member, to abandon the ship and take to the boats in mid-ocean; and he then learnt a lesson which he never forgot, and formed ideas with respect to the fitting of boats which his nautical friends had been wont to rather sneer at and stigmatise as “queer.” But when the Galatea was in process of fitting out he had, with some difficulty, succeeded in persuading his owners to allow him to carry out these ideas, and the boats were fitted up almost under his own eye.
The chief peculiarity of the boats lay in their keels. These were made a trifle stouter than usual, and of ordinary depth. But they were so shaped and finished that a false keel some eight or nine inches deep could be securely fastened on below in a very few minutes. This was managed by having the true keel bored in some half a dozen places along its length, and the holes “bushed” with copper. The copper bushes projected a quarter of an inch above the upper edge of the keel, and were so finished as to allow of copper caps screwing on over them, thus effectually preventing the flow of water up through the bolt-holes into the interior of the boat. The false keel was made to accurately fit the true keel, and was provided with stout copper bolts coinciding in number and position with the bolt-holes in the true keel. To fix the false keel all that was necessary was to unscrew the caps from the top of the “bushes,” apply the false to the true keel, pushing the bolts up through their respective holes, and set them up tight by means of thumb-screws. The whole operation could be performed in a couple of minutes, and the boats were then fit to beat to windward to any extent.
As far as the gigs were concerned (with the exception of the whaleboat gig, which was an exquisitely modelled boat, fitted with air-chambers so as to render her self-righting and unsinkable), beyond greater attention than usual to the model of the craft, this was the only difference which Captain Staunton had thought it necessary to make between the boats of the Galatea and those of other ships; but in the cases of the launch and pinnace he had gone a step further, by fitting them with movable decks in sections, which covered in the boats forward and aft and for about a foot wide right along each side. These decks were bolted down and secured with thumb-screws to beams which fitted into sockets under the gunwale; and when the whole was once fixed each section contributed to keep all immovably in place. The decking being but light it was not difficult to fix, and in an hour after the order was given to launch the boats, the launch and pinnace were in the water alongside, and the gigs hanging at the davits ready to lower away at a moment’s notice.
Thanks also to Captain Staunton’s never-ceasing care with regard to the boats, they were all in perfect condition, and not leaky as baskets, as are too many boats when required to be lowered upon an unexpected
emergency. The gigs and the launch were regularly half-filled with water every morning before the decks were washed down, and emptied at the conclusion of that ceremony; while the pinnace, which was stowed bottom-up in the launch, was liberally soused with water at the same time. In addition to this the proper complement of oars and rowlocks, the stretchers, boat-hook, mop, baler, anchor, rudder, yoke, and tiller, together with the compass, masts, and sails, were always stowed in the boat to which they belonged, and were carefully overhauled once every week under the skipper’s own eye.
Thus, on the present occasion, there was none of that bewildered running about and searching high and low for the boats’ gear; it was all at hand and ready for use whenever it might be wanted; there was nothing therefore to do but to make sure that each boat was amply provisioned. This, the launch and pinnace being safely in the water, was Bob’s next task, to which he devoted himself coolly but with all alacrity.
The boats’ water-breakers, which were slung, ready filled, between the fore and after gallows, under two of the gigs (each breaker bearing painted upon it the name of the boat to which it belonged), were cast adrift and passed into their proper boats as they were lowered, and then followed as large a quantity of provisions as could possibly be stowed away without too much encumbering the movements of the occupants.
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