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Updated: May 31, 2025
If there is any real need of us, Denman will call us out." This was good sailorly logic, and they climbed back into their bunks, to smoke, to read, or to talk themselves to sleep again. As the wind and sea arose they closed the other two deadlights, and when darkness closed down they turned out the dazzling bulbs, and slept through the night as only sailors can.
A missal in a library of modern books! On deck a fine rain was blowing through a gap in our burlap shroud, a phosphorescent fringe of foam hissed along the sides of the ship, giving the illusory appearance of our deadlights open and ablaze, exaggerating the sinister blackness of the night. We were, apparently, a beacon in that sepia waste where modern undersea monsters were lurking.
The apartment, long and triangular in shape, was dimly lighted by four deadlights, two each side, and for a moment Sampson could not distinguish one from another. "Where's my bag?" he demanded, generally. "I want dry clothes." He groped his way to the bunk he had occupied, found his clothes bag, and drew out a complete change of garments.
In a few moments Denman made out details six parallel lines of deadlights, one above the other, and extending from bow to stern, a length of a thousand feet; three tiers of deck houses, one above the other amidships; a line of twenty boats to a side along the upper deck, and her after rails black with passengers; while as many as six uniformed officers stood on her bridge eighty feet above the water line.
The boat was storming along to the southward, as he knew by a glance at the "telltale" overhead, and all seemed well with the runaways until a sudden stopping of the engines roused him up, to peer out the deadlights, and speculate as to what was ahead. But he saw nothing, from either side, and strained his ears for sounds from the deck. There was excitement above.
Then these bubbles burst, giving vent to clouds of brown and yellow smoke; while up through the ventilators and out through the opened lower deadlights came more of this smoke, and the sound of human voices, screaming and groaning. These sounds were drowned in the buzzing of thousands of other voices on deck as men, women, and children fought their way toward the stern.
Amid the roar of escaping steam, and the bee-like buzzing of nearly three thousand human voices, raised in agonized screams and callings from within the inclosing walls, and the whistling of air through hundreds of open deadlights as the water, entering the holes of the crushed and riven starboard side, expelled it, the Titan moved slowly backward and launched herself into the sea, where she floated low on her side a dying monster, groaning with her death-wound.
But, though Sampson grew quiet and Denman succeeded in reaching the dark, steel side, there was nothing to catch hold of not a trailing rope, nor eyebolt, nor even the open deadlights, for they were high out of reach. The crew were locked in the forecastle, and there was only Florrie.
"No, by gum, it don't," agreed Silver; "not nat'ral, nor not nice, says you. Great guns, messmates, but if Flint was living this would be a hot spot for you and me! Six they were, and six are we; and bones is what they are now." "I saw him dead with these here deadlights," said Morgan. "Billy took me in. There he laid, with penny-pieces on his eyes."
It is true that they now had the masonry of the lighthouse to resort to, which, no doubt, lessened the actual danger of their situation; but the building was still without a roof, and the deadlights, or storm-shutters, not being yet fitted, the windows of the lower story were stove in and broken, and at high-water the sea ran in considerable quantities out at the entrance door.
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