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Updated: May 5, 2025
I let him get nearly to the companion-way, and then ran after him with my face burning. "I beg your pardon for laughing at you, Mr Preddle," I said. He turned his piteous face toward me, and smiled in a simple, good-natured way, as he held out his hand. "You couldn't help it," he said; "I suppose I did look very ridiculous. It's because I'm so stout; p'r'aps being at sea will take it down."
As the pilot spoke Dutch, the story of the unfortunate captain was obtained at last. The vessel had been caught in the squall, and knocked down. Two men on deck had been washed away and drowned. The companion-way being open, the water had rushed in and prevented the vessel from righting.
The scene and all its surroundings had very much altered since she had last been up the companion-way; so that when she got on the poop now, so great a transformation had occurred that it seemed to her as if she were in a species of nautical fairyland. The ship herself was cased in ice hull, spars, and standing rigging, and all with long pendulous icicles hanging from the main and mizzen yards.
Nevertheless, this calm security was presently invaded by a sense of stealthy life and motion. What had seemed a fixed shadow suddenly detached itself from the deck and began to slip stanchion by stanchion along the bulwarks toward the companion-way. At the cabin-door it halted and crouched motionless.
George Wentworth had waited at the top of the companion-way a little more than five minutes when Miss Brewster appeared, wrapped in a cloak edged with fur, which lent an additional charm to her complexion, set off as it was by a jaunty steamer cap. They stepped out on the deck, and found it not at all so dark as they had expected.
She got Katy into her dress and wraps, and seated her on deck in a chair with a great rug wrapped about her feet, with very little effort on Katy's part. Then she dived down the companion-way again, and in the course of an hour appeared escorting a big burly steward, who carried poor little pale Amy in his arms as easily as though she had been a kitten.
I then crawled quite aft, as far as the fashion-piece. The water was pouring down the cabin companion-way like a sluice; and as I stood, for an instant, on the fashion-piece, I saw Mr. Osgood, with his head and part of his shoulders through one of the cabin windows, struggling to get out. He must have been within six feet of me.
If the worst had happened, everyone would be fighting for life in a few minutes. Out on deck she must get and find out for herself what the worst was. She was the first woman outside, though the wails and shrieks swelled below, and half-dressed, ghastly creatures tumbled gasping up the companion-way. "What is it?" she heard. "My God! what's happened? Where's the Captain! Are we going down!
And yet, you little rag puppet, you little echoing mechanism, you are unable to kill me as you would a snake or a shark, because I have hands, feet, and a body shaped somewhat like yours. Bah! I had hoped better things of you, Hump." He stepped out of the companion-way and came up to me. "Put down that gun. I want to ask you some questions. I haven't had a chance to look around yet.
The schooner, swept by three big seas, creaked and groaned and quivered, and from the weight of water on her decks behaved logily. Grief crept to the engine, while Captain Warfield waited his chance to get through the companion-way and out on deck. It was half an hour before he came back. "Whaleboat's gone!" he reported. "Galley's gone! Everything gone except the deck and hatches!
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