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The gale, too, now gradually subsided, and enabled the half-wrecked people to take more comfortable positions, and Aphiz and Selim to prepare a raft with the assistance of the crew, for it was but too apparent that the schooner must go down before long.
The man was promptly released, and two hours afterwards Major Abaza sailed on the Saghalin for Okhotsk, leaving us to do the best we could with our half-wrecked stranded ship and her mutinous crew.
Then he told me that, ten days before, he had taken two ladies from a half-wrecked French steamer, and that they had prayed and besought him to cruise about and look for the Sparhawk, a helpless ship, with a friend of theirs alone on board.
His feeling about the hand of fate striking them down became an obsession. What chance had men without an ounce of food or a drop of water to withstand a siege? But he communicated his fears to no one. Two or three hours before day, he became so sore and weary from work with the spade that he crawled into one of the half-wrecked wagons, and tried to go to sleep.
When he came back along the trench five minutes later he found Bunthrop feverishly busy re-piling sandbags and strengthening the parapet, ducking hastily and crouching low when a shell roared past overhead, but hurriedly resuming work the instant it had passed. Then came the fresh German attack, preceded by five minutes' intense artillery fire, concentrated on the half-wrecked trench.
Now and then a heavy sea would break over us, and we would all begin bailing again with our hats; but aside from this there was nothing to be done. It did not seem to me probable that the half-wrecked sloop would live more than three or four hours.
Her mission led her to a half-wrecked shanty at the south end of the town, where some Lithuanian emigrants herded together in indescribable filth and misery. A woman who had been recently confined lay there raving in puerperal fever. Until nightfall, when she was removed to the Isolation Hospital on the veld, near the Women's Laager, the Mother-Superior remained with the patient.
About eight o'clock, as the half-wrecked victors and vanquished were slowly struggling into the half-ruined harbour, five winged shapes became visible against the grey sky over Calais, rapidly growing in size, and a few minutes later two more appeared, approaching from the north-east.
Carefully he went over the deserted and now half-wrecked house, for the authorities had spared nothing in their search for poison, even going over the garden and the lawns in the hope of finding some of the poisonous shrub, hemlock, which it was contended had been used to put an end to Mr. Godwin.
The deck was quite empty, all the crew being busy below, but it was one mass of broken timbers, fallen sails, and all the debris of a half-wrecked vessel. But as the fresh air met their faces, it braced them to new courage, and each looked curiously about. Above, the sky was already clearing and the ragged-edged clouds were rolling northwards, leaving clear spaces which rapidly enlarged.
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