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Updated: July 4, 2025
"This must not be!" cried the skipper and Uncle Paul almost at the same time. "Pipe all hands to extinguish the fire!" Suiting the action to the word, they setting the example, we all, as we floated about on our lifebuoys, began to throw water on the flames with our hands. "Heave away, my lads! heave away, and put out the flames!" cried Uncle Paul.
There was great turmoil on the sea for some time after the ship disappeared; the ammunition house on the poop floated away, a fair amount of wreckage also came away, an oar shot up high into the air from one of the hatches, the sodium lights attached to one of the lifebuoys ignited and ran along the water, and then the Wolf, exactly like a murderer making sure that the struggles of his victim had finally ceased, moved away from the scene of her latest crime.
But the very undoubted fact remained that he was there in the water, that there was an ugly sea running, that he couldn't swim, and that the place bristled with sharks. A couple of lifebuoys, one after the other, hit him accurately on the head, and the lighter cast off, and backed down to try and pick him up.
Without their powerful electric lights it would have been impossible to recognise the boats or the gangways leading to them. Juve had Butler by the arm: a necessary precaution, for the wretched man could scarcely keep on his feet. Juve propelled him towards a gangway: a minute later both were on the boat. Vinson caught sight of the inscription Empress on the lifebuoys.
If any accident should happen he had made up his mind that the only thing to be done was to don the lifebuoys, cut the engine loose, and trust to the buoys to keep them and the planes afloat until their plight was observed from some passing vessel. In the darkness this would, of course, prove a vain hope; even in daylight the chance that a vessel would be in sight was remote.
"Roddy and I shall have to take watch and watch." "But suppose you're caught in a storm; suppose the engine breaks down when you're over the sea " "My dear chap, if we fall into the sea we shan't hurt ourselves so much as if it were land. I've got a couple of lifebuoys. If a storm comes on, too bad to sail through, we must come down and wait till it's over.
Among other articles which had been put on board were a number of large nuts from the cuja-tree, with which Uncle Paul proposed forming floats or lifebuoys for each of the party. "We might," he observed, "have to swim on shore, or they might help on some other occasion to save our lives."
The Indians, I forgot to say, formed a number of cups and basins for us from the rind of this fruit. From them also we had manufactured the lifebuoys which I have described. As we sailed along, numerous birds of the most gorgeous plumage were seen either resting on the boughs or flying overhead across the stream. Among them were several species of trogons and little bristle-tailed manakins.
Tommy understood his case, and looked quickly round for one of those ring-shaped lifebuoys which we are accustomed to see in our passenger steamers tied up so securely that they would in most cases of sudden emergency be utterly useless. But the owners of the "Butterfly" were economists.
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