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It was a blind and desperate venture, and the Vosmeer soon swallowed four hundred of the Spaniards. The rest, half-drowned or smothered, succeeded in reaching the shore the chiefs of the expedition, Renty and Mansfeld, having been with difficulty rescued by their followers, when nearly sinking in the tide.
It was a most unequal encounter, for while the Malays were upon comparatively substantial ground, the dinghy rocked to and fro, and it only needed the hand of the half-drowned Malay to catch at the side, in a frantic effort to save his life, to send it right over, and Bob and the English sailor into the stream.
Had the strain lasted another instant, he must have loosed his hold; but, with a wild hoarse shriek, as though it was some sea-monster baffled of its prey, the column sank, and left him gasping, bleeding, half-drowned, but alive. It was impossible that he could survive another shock, and in his agony he unclasped his stiffened fingers, determined to resign himself to his fate.
His foot was in the stirrup when a quick rush sounded behind him. He saw the man on the ground spring to his feet, and quick on the consciousness of that fact there came a blow that stretched him as stiff as a dead man. Lambert came to himself with a half-drowned sense of suffocation. Water was falling on his head, pouring over his face, and there was the confused sound of human voices around him.
The streets ran rivers and the hotel floor was flooded with water. The dinner had to be suspended. When the storm finished and left every body drenched through and through, and melancholy and half-drowned, the ascensionists came down from the mountain as dry as so many charity-sermons!
Tommy soon returned with a tumbler of hot brandy and water, followed by the steward with a pile of blankets. "Hold that a minute," said the boy, handing the tumbler to a little old gentleman who stood swaying to and fro with the motion of the vessel, and staring at Bax as if he had been a half-drowned sea-monster.
As day fades into night the monotony of this strange prospect grows oppressive. I seek the engine room, and in the company of some of the few half-drowned sufferers we have already picked up from temporary rafts, I forget the general aspect of desolation in their individual misery. Later we meet the San Francisco packet, and transfer a number of our passengers.
This timely decision was the probable means of saving all our lives. In the course of a few hours, after he had got the boat under command, he caught a glimpse of the fore-royal-masts sticking out from the cap of a sea, and watching it eagerly, he next perceived the whole of the raft, as it came up on the same swell, with Marble, half-drowned, lashed to the top.
In another moment a half-dozen hands were stretched for him, and the insensible form was drawn in and laid on a deck which still showed the results of the night's fierce conflict with the waters. "Damn it! how ugly he is!" cried one of the sailors, with a leer at the half-drowned man's face. "I'd like to see the lass we'd please in saving him. He's only fit to poison a devil-fish!"
She might not have been missed when the half-drowned passengers were all drawn out. So mother added a little crape to her widow's weeds, the key of the closed room lay henceforth in her drawer, and all things went on as before. To her children my mother was never gloomy, it was not her way. No shadow of household affliction was placed like a skeleton confronting our uncomprehending joy.
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