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Updated: June 29, 2025
It was my watch below when the gale came on, and I was awoke by the terrific blows which the schooner received on her bows; and what with the darkness and the confusion caused by the noise of the sea and the rattling of the blocks aloft, the stamp of feet overhead, and the creaking of the bulk-heads, I fully believed the ship was going down, and that my last moment had come.
"Lightning!" exclaimed Pottle contemptuously; "d'ye think I don't know lightning when I see it? No, it looked more like by George, there it is again!" At the same moment one of the men forward hailed, but I could not catch what he said for the creaking of the bulk-heads. "Ay, ay, I saw it," answered Pottle. "What did it look like to you, Martin?"
In vain the captain and his mates shouted to the men, their voices were drowned by the loud uproar of the waves, the howling and whistling of the wind in the rigging, the creaking of the bulk-heads, the flapping of the canvas, the complaining of the masts and spars. A fierce hurricane was blowing, such as Captain Westerway said he had never before encountered in those seas.
Otherwise I might wonder at the completeness with which these fowls have become separated from all the birds of the air have taken to grovelling in bricks and mortar and mud have forgotten all about live trees, and make roosting-places of shop-boards, barrows, oyster-tubs, bulk-heads, and door-scrapers. I wonder at nothing concerning them, and take them as they are.
At noon-day the water rose and beat the bulk-heads of the bread-room, powder-room, and forepiece, all to pieces; thus she continued till three, and then the sea came up on the upper deck, and soon after she began to settle.
It is divided transversely into ten separate compartments of 60 feet each, rendered perfectly water-tight by bulk-heads, having no openings whatever lower than the second deck; whilst two longitudinal walls of iron, 36 feet apart, traverse 350 feet of the length of the ship.
Here and there through the gloomy cabin lay the victims of the fell malady, in every stage of suffering, and in every attitude of misery. Their cries and lamentings mingled with the creaking of the bulk-heads and the jarring twang of the dirty lamp, whose irregular swing told plainly how oscillatory was our present motion.
If the ship be new, it will be of great advantage that the captain or first lieutenant should point out to the dockyard officers what he considers the best place for the bulk-heads, or partitions separating the different holds from one another.
They are placed on her side against the bulk-heads and vital spots, connected with each other by a wire under the ship’s keel. Each torpedo contains eighty-two pounds of gunpowder. Each torpedo is also connected with the bridge; they should do their work in a minute, and it will be quick work even if done in a minute and a quarter. “On deck there will be four men and myself.
The cabin bulk-heads were knocked away, fire-screens were put up, the doors of the magazine were thrown open, and powder and shot were being handed up on deck. For some time I was left alone, with a sentry only stationed over me. I longed to be set free. I trusted that I was not to remain a prisoner during the action which it was expected was about to take place.
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