There, he saw, the cabin-table had vanished
somewhere. The deck being blown up, it had fallen down into the
lazarette of course. Where we had our breakfast that morning he saw only
a great hole in the floor. This appeared to him so awfully mysterious,
and impressed him so immensely, that what he saw and heard after he got
on deck were mere trifles in comparison. And, mark, he noticed directly
the wheel deserted and his barque off her course--and his only thought
was to get that miserable, stripped, undecked, smouldering shell of
a ship back again with her head pointing at her port of destination.
Bankok! That's what he was after. I tell you this quiet, bowed,
bandy-legged, almost deformed little man was immense in the singleness
of his idea and in his placid ignorance of our agitation. He motioned us
forward with a commanding gesture, and went to take the wheel himself.
"Yes; that was the first thing we did--trim the yards of that wreck! No
one was killed, or even disabled, but everyone was more or less hurt.
You should have seen them! Some were in rags, with black faces, like
coal-heavers, like sweeps, and had bullet heads that seemed closely
cropped, but were in fact singed to the skin. Others, of the watch
below, awakened by being shot out from their collapsing bunks, shivered
incessantly, and kept on groaning even as we went about our work. But
they all worked. That crew of Liverpool hard cases had in them the right
stuff.
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