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For I found that while my companion and I were clinging to the wreckage of the ill-fated City of Cawnpore's mainmast the whole of which had somehow come adrift from the hull we were surrounded by and tangled up with a large quantity of planking and woodwork, some of which we recognised as having belonged to our own ship, while the remainder resolved itself into the shattered hull of a large, timber-laden, wooden ship which had been cut nearly half through by the tremendous impact of our own vessel upon it when she struck it and so destroyed herself in the darkness of the preceding night.

The cook went to his galley, and lighted his fire, quite in the ordinary way, and set about preparing breakfast, while the rest, going to the City of Cawnpore's gig, looked into her, talking together in low tones.

From the graphic account of this murderous period of Cawnpore's history contained in the "Tourists' Guide to Cawnpore" is quoted the following brief account of Nana's consummate deed of devilment. But the Nana's reign of terror was now drawing to a close, though not to terminate without a stroke destined to make the civilized world shudder from end to end.

And not only so, but when I got alongside her I was delighted to find that she was one of the City of Cawnpore's quarter boats no doubt the one that the miners had cut partially adrift ere the ship went down the especial significance and importance of this discovery arising from the fact that poor Dacre had made a point of having every item of each boat's equipment stowed within her, and properly secured; so that, unless something very untoward had happened, it was reasonable to hope that I should find this craft thus furnished.

This also we dragged away upon for dear life, and presently I had the satisfaction of seeing the end of the City of Cawnpore's towing-hawser being lighted out over her bows.

The arrangement was this: The City of Cawnpore's to wing-hawser was now stretched between the two vessels, one end being made fast to the barque's mizenmast, while the other end led in over the City of Cawnpore's bows, through a warping chock, and was secured somewhere inboard, probably to the windlass bitts it would have been much more convenient had the hawser been made fast to the foremast, about fifteen or twenty feet from the deck; but a very heavy intermittent strain was being thrown upon it, and I imagined that Dacre did not care to run the risk of springing so important a spar.