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She was a mere tub of a ship in shape, being scarce twice as long as she was broad, with great fat buttocks, a very tall stern narrowing atop, and low bows with a prodigious curve to the stem-head.
The navigation of the narrow creek was, however, so difficult that a look- out was absolutely necessary, and Smellie accordingly went forward and stationed himself on the stem-head to con the ship.
Farther out old Mahon's face was upturned to the sky, with the long white beard spread out on his breast, as though he had been shot where he sat at the tiller; and a man, all in a heap in the bows of the boat, slept with both arms embracing the stem-head and with his cheek laid on the gunwale. The East looked at them without a sound.
The Grosser Carl had fallen away before the wind, and was spouting flame from stem-head to poop-staff by the time the last of the rescuers and the rescued were put on the Flamingo's deck, and on that travel-worn steamboat were some six hundred and fifty visitors that somehow or other had to be provided for. The detail of famine now became of next importance.
They quickly tumbled in over the gunwale; Bob then placed his shoulder against the stem-head, and with a powerful "shove," drove the boat stern-foremost into the stream, springing in over the bows and stowing himself away in the eyes of the boat as she floated.
I placed myself at the tiller, Carera took up a position on the stem-head, conning the felucca, and Courtenay devoted all his energies to the encouragement of the men as they laboured at the sweeps.
This was not difficult, for the whole fleet excepting one battleship and two cruisers in dry dock were lying off the dockyard, while the Mikasa was easily distinguishable, even to a stranger, from the fact that she was flying the Admiral's flag. I noticed also that her stem-head was decorated with a gilded conventional representation of the open chrysanthemum, the Imperial crest.
"I could see the line of the horizon before me, as clear as a bell, above her stem-head; I could see the water far off there black and sparkling, and still still as a-pond, deadly still, more still than ever sea was before more still than I could bear to look at. Have you watched a ship floating head down, checked in sinking by a sheet of old iron too rotten to stand being shored up? Have you?
On it swept toward the felucca, which had now slewed so that she faced the coming swell nearly stem-on, the water in her meanwhile rushing forward as she sank down into the trough until her stem-head was completely buried.
Success to the Petrel" as he shivered to pieces on the stem-head a bottle of wine which the steward, anxious that the launch should be shorn of none of its honours, had brought up from the cabin and hastily thrust into his hand. "Three cheers for the saucy Petrel, my lads hip, hip, hip, hurrah!"
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