of such days in succession, with all the ship's boats towing astern to keep them watertight - Stephen left him down in his private lair, dissecting an eared seal's foetus, the pride of their largest jar of spirits. Although this was probably the foetus of the new species that was to be called Otaria macleanii and that was to win them undying glory, Stephen could no longer bear the dense cloud of tobacco-smoke (for McLean worked with his pipe in his mouth), the fumes of alcohol, and the enclosed, fetid heat, after the gunroom supper of pease-pudding. He wished McLean good night, warned him not to overtax his eyes, heard his abstracted grunt, and groped his way up ladders to the deck. The watch had been set long since, and the ship was very quiet: she was slipping along under topsails alone with the wind one point free, making perhaps a couple of knots through the long easy swell. The master had the watch, and he was not one to badger the hands with jib and staysails after a wearing day hogging and boot-topping the ship's weed-grown sides for some minute increase of speed. Stephen could see him, as his eyes grew accustomed to the dark, standing near the quartermaster at the con, in the glow of the binnacle light. Beyond him, by the taffrail, Jack was showing his midshipmen the stars, and Forshaw's high young voice could be heard piping about the Southern Cross. Such stars! The young moon had set, and they blazed there in a velvet sky, hanging, he would have sworn, at different heights, with Mars a startling red among them. A certain refreshment rose from the sea, a damp exhalation almost cool, and Stephen walked forward across the space amidships where in ordinary times the boats stood on their chocks and which was now strewn with sleeping or at least recumbent figures, their heads enveloped in their jackets. He made his way through them to the bows, then carefully out along the bowsprit as far as the spritsail yard. There he turned, and sitting easy, let himself go to the smooth motion of the ship, gazing now at the ghostly foretopsail, now up at the masthead describing intricate regular curves among the stars, and again down at the cutwater, perpetually advancing, never reaching him, shearing the black sea with a faint white gleam. There was a continual living sound of blocks heaving, the strain and slight creak of wood and cordage, the hiss and ripple and surge of the water: he was very tired, quite why he could not tell, unless it was the effort of keeping his mind from anxious, fruitless worrying about Diana - she was very present to his inward eye these days - and the events in Catalonia. Back there in the ship the bells struck one after another, and every time the sentinels called 'All's well' from their various stations. Perhaps it was their reiterated cries that impressed their sense upon his unreasoning part, perhaps several of a thousand other causes, but after some time his tiredness was no longer a jaded, harassed fatigue but mild, calm, physical weariness, a comfortable desire for sleep. He crept back, holding his breath and any rope that came to hand: if Jack or Bonden should discover him he would have to endure their reproaches: he would be harshly blamed. However, he managed the descent and walked aft; Jack and his star-gazers were no longer there, so after a word with the master and a long stare at the wake, the faintly phosphorescent starlit wake with the boats black in it, like little whales, he went below.
Unfortunately the midshipmen were still keeping it up. The liveliest of the ship's young gentlemen had been brought up by his uncle, an Oxford don, and he had instituted gaudy nights. This was one of them, and through his wax Stephen could hear
Our Captain was very good to us,
He dipped his prick in phosphorus;
It shed a light all through the night
And steered us through the Bosphorus.
Again and again they sang it, and again and again there was the howl of laughter at the end: it seemed to grow funnier with each repetition, and by four bells they could not get beyond 'was very good to us' before they were overcome by mirth.
'Four bells, the vile brute-beasts,' said Stephen, ramming the wax still further home. But five bells he never heard. He was deep, deep down; and his next impression was one of extreme, general, incoherent violence - Jack shaking him, pulling him bodily out of his cot, shouting 'Fire, fire, the ship's on fire. Get up on deck.'
He could see almost nothing for the smoke, but snatching up a book and writing-case he followed Jack's fleeting lantern along the deserted orlop to the forehatch. The whole deck was aglow with a rosy light reflected from the smoke and the sails, and an occasional tongue of flame could be seen above the main hatchway. Hoses were playing, half-naked men heaving strongly at the pumps. He stood there for a moment in his shirt, grasping the situation; then he turned to dart down to his cabin, but the scorching smoke drove him back directly, and as he emerged so a fountain of brilliant flame shot up from the cabin skylight. The main and mizen topsails and all their tarred rigging took fire at once: blazing pieces fell on the deck, starting other fires - coils of rope, wood tinder-dry all flared with an extraordinary speed and brilliance - and now there was a vast omnipresent roar as the main fire took an unconquerable hold.
The men started from the pumps and ran to the side, all looking at Captain Yorke. 'Starboard watch away,' he cried. 'Easy, easy, there. Leopards to the blue cutter.'
There was a rush for the bows, where the boats had been hauled alongside: not an undisciplined panic- stricken rush, but violent enough for Stephen to be thrown down and trampled upon. He found himself picked up, heard Bonden's strong voice cry 'Make a lane, there', and there was Babbington, grasping his legs and guiding him into the boat.
'Pull clear ahead,' shouted Yorke, and a moment later, 'Larboard watch away.'
Now the flames roared higher still. There was some confusion, men throwing themselves into the water, shouts of 'Come on, sir, come on'. But in the glare Yorke, Warner and the gunner could be seen racing about the deck, firing the guns so that they should not go off at random as the heat reached them, perhaps hitting the boats. The last three guns all together, and Yorke came down the side, the last man off the ship. 'Give way,' he called, and his gig shot forward, passed through the rest, and led the way, pulling very fast. Presently they rested on their oars and gazed back at their ship: they gazed and gazed, with never a word, and in half an hour she blew up, a vast crimson lasting flash that grew with enormous speed, covering the sky, followed by a total darkness and the sound of timbers, masts, spars plunging from the darkness into the empty sea.
CHAPTER THREE
The blue cutter was eighteen feet long, and with thirteen men in the boat it was uncomfortably crowded, dangerously low in the water. They were silent and for the most part motionless, squeezed into what little shade they could find - precious little, under the high tropical sun, but more now that it was fast declining from its height, well down the western sky ahead. A sensible relief, for the blaze directly overhead at noon might have been called intolerable but for the fact that they had borne it. They had a good deal to bear, apart from the heat and the overcrowding: fear, hunger, thirst, and sunburn, and of these sunburn was the most immediate.
Their shirts now formed the small shoulder-of-mutton sail that was to carry them across the ocean to Brazil, and although their faces and forearms were tanned beyond the reach of any sun their backs were not: those with pigtails had unplaited them and spread the long hair as some kind of a shield, but that was not much use against such a blaze and their backs were fiery red or purple, cracked and peeling or quite raw; for although the cutter was properly fitted with its oars, stretchers, mast and cordage, its sails had formed part of the bosun's perquisites at the Cape, the loss being disguised by a small piece of canvas stuffed with junk. There were a few jackets in the boat, and these were passed, wetted, to those that took their places on the sunward side, turn and turn about at each hypothetical bell. As for fear, it had always been present from the moment it replaced their intense relief at
