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Updated: June 2, 2025
The Chinaman lay on the floor, still groaning; the place was pitch dark. "Brown!" cried Carthew; "Brown, where are you?" His heart smote him for the treacherous apostrophe, but no answer came. He groped in the bunks: they were all empty. Then he moved towards the forepeak, which was hampered with coils of rope and spare chandlery in general. "Brown!" he said again.
'I did not, said Jim. 'I was told to call no one and to make no noise for fear of creating a panic. I thought the precaution reasonable. I took one of the lamps that were hung under the awnings and went forward. After opening the forepeak hatch I heard splashing in there. I lowered then the lamp the whole drift of its lanyard, and saw that the forepeak was more than half full of water already.
He spoke a few words to him, and the man having got up and stretched himself to ascertain, I suppose, that no bones were broken dived below, and presently returned with a white cap and apron, and several pans and dishes, and began busying himself in the mysteries of his art. Again he dived, the fire in the forepeak burned up brightly, and savory smells began to ascend therefrom.
The arm was set and splinted; the body of Brown fetched from the forepeak, where it lay still and cold, and committed to the waters of the lagoon; and the washing of the cabin rudely finished. All these were done ere midday; and it was past three when the first cat's-paw ruffled the lagoon, and the wind came in a dry squall, which presently sobered to a steady breeze.
I knew there was no other bulkhead in the ship but the collision bulkhead separating the forepeak from the forehold. I went back to tell the captain. I came upon the second engineer getting up at the foot of the bridge-ladder: he seemed dazed, and told me he thought his left arm was broken; he had slipped on the top step when getting down while I was forward. He exclaimed, "My God!
Both forward and aft there was a great variety of casks, and bales, and packages, apparently taken out of different vessels which had been captured. As soon as the sun rose, the search was commenced. Another keg of water, found in the forepeak, first rewarded their labours.
Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeak stuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped place where they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burned lubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled of fish. A troller's boat was rubbing against the Blanco's fenders when they came on deck again.
Others, of huge bulk, I thought, would come and float silently, looking at the little schooner, an intruder on their domain, seemingly devising means how they might drive her from it. I ought to have been below resting, as the captain had ordered me, but I was hot and feverish, and could not remain in the close atmosphere of the forepeak.
A few minutes later the crew had cleared the union jack from the wreckage and had it flaunting defiantly from the forepeak. It was an odd defiance, a tugboat's challenge to a German battle line. The nibbling of a mouse once set a lion free. Here was a mouse endeavoring to net a whole herd of lions. The cruisers did not overhaul the little vessel as rapidly as Madden had anticipated.
The first thing Tom did was to bring me a mug of water, which I eagerly drank. After that the captain ordered that I should be carried to a spare berth in the cabin. "We must have him there, that he may be properly looked after. He'll be better off than in the forepeak," he said. From this I guessed that he was a kind-hearted man, very different to Captain Longfleet.
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