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A lantern was lighted at the foot of the mainmast, round which was hung a gun-rack, furnished with weapons of all sorts. Ayrton took a revolver from the rack, and assured himself that it was loaded and primed. Nothing more was needed to accomplish the work of destruction. He then glided towards the stern, so as to arrive under the brig's poop at the powder-magazine.
And sure enough, up came another of the monsters, breaking water with a rush that showed nearly half his length, at a distance of only some fifty yards from the brig. "And there is another!" cried Miss Trevor, with unmistakable trepidation, as a third came to the surface and blew close under the brig's counter. "Pity as we ain't a whaler, sir," remarked the helmsman.
In less than ten minutes the boat was alongside again and being hoisted up. As the brig's forefoot came over her anchor Rawlings, who gave his orders very quietly, waited for a favourable moment.
By the time that these letters were ready, the whaler was close at hand, upon which the brig's ensign was hoisted, and the signal made that she wished to communicate.
"No," said Leslie; "and I am rather afraid we may have a hard job to find one. There is only one thing that I can think of, and that is one of the brig's water tanks. I had intended to bring one ashore for that especial purpose; but now that those rascally savages have burnt the craft we may find that her tanks have been destroyed by the fire." "I should think not, sir," dissented Nicholls.
Succour came none too soon, as in less than an hour the brig's mainmast went by the board. She cocked her stern up and went down head first. The smack reached close across the stern of the Blake, and the shipwrecked crew exchanged salutes with her. Her speaking-trumpet was used in trying to communicate that she was making a lot of water and to report having spoken her.
"Well, then, sir, as she aren't a merchant brig's boat, and the brig herself aren't a man-of-war, perhaps you will tell me what she is? You can't, sir?" "No, Joe." "No more can I, sir; but if we keeps our eyes open I dare say we shall see."
This begins at the moment of the brig's collision with the iceberg, and I shall narrate it, if for no other reason, at least to give an account of my curiously cool and deliberate conduct. This conduct at this time, as you shall see, was what enabled me in the end to survive alone of all the ship's company. I was awakened, in my bunk in the forecastle, by a terrific crash.
In answer to this remark, the wit of the Poughkeepsie had told the brig's man, "you had better send her on board us, for we carry a chaplain, a regular-built one, that will be a bishop some day or other, perhaps, and we can get her spliced to one of our young officers."
She was heavily laden with the brig's crew of limp and shivering Danish seamen. And it was not a moment too soon for her to be ashore: the brig parted almost directly, and the wreckage was strewn all along the beach. The men who did this action never had any reward. And it did not matter; for they took a very moderate view of their own merits.
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