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Even when my eyes got a little accustomed to the change from light to darkness, I could only just make out the mizzen-mast astern and the lower part of the main-mast forward; beyond these was nothing but impenetrable thickness.
Over she heeled before it, the fore-staysail with a loud report flew out of the bolt-ropes ere it had done its duty of paying off the ship's head. Again and again the savage blast struck her side, pressing her still farther down, while the ever-increasing seas broke in foaming masses over her. The captain gave the order to cut away the mizzen-mast, and set another staysail.
And, ere I fainted into the blackness, on my side, staring, my pain gone so beyond endurance that it had achieved its own anaesthesia, I glimpsed, dream-like and distant, the sharply silhouetted poop-rail, dark forms that cut and thrust and smote, and, beyond, the mizzen-mast brightly lighted by our illuminators. Well, the mutineers failed to take the poop.
Mellaire, or, rather, Sidney Waltham, despite his fifty years, did what only a sailor could do. He went over the bridge-rail side-wise, caught the running gear up-and-down the mizzen-mast, and landed lightly on his feet on top of Number Three hatch. Nor did he stop there. He ran across the hatch and dived through the doorway of his room in the 'midship-house. Such must have been Mr.
I went below to the pantry, striking a match to see my way by; and when I had lighted the big lamp that was hanging there the glass chimney of which, in some wonderful way, had pulled through the crash which had sent the mizzen-mast flying the place seemed so cheerful that my desire for supper increased prodigiously, and tended still farther to down my sorrowful thoughts.
"At the height of the Maëlstrom, on the 26th of April, the ship, putting for the cape, by reason of bad weather and south-west winds, perceived signals of distress made by a schooner to the leeward. This schooner, deprived of its mizzen-mast, was running towards the whirlpool, under bare poles.
And Mesty took up the coils of rope about the mizzen-mast, and threw them upon deck, one after another, making all the noise possible. In a short time there was a violent pull of a bell at the cabin door, and in a minute afterwards a man in his shirt came up the cabin-hatchway, who was immediately secured. "Dis de captain's servant," said Mesty, "he come say no make such damned noise.
They were pushed and dragged up to the foot of the mizzen-mast, where Jarette seated himself in one of the deck chairs, and Walters, with a pistol in his hand and another in his belt, stood by the Frenchman's side, resting one foot upon the seat of the chair, as if on terms of the greatest intimacy with its occupant.
A nicely-cushioned seat with a reversible back, so that people could either face their cabins or the table as they pleased by shifting it this way and that, was fixed along either side of the table; and at the extreme aftermost end of this, behind the mizzen-mast, I saw Mr Saunders and Matthews.
The shroud most exposed had parted first; three or four more followed in succession, and before there was time to secure anything, the remainder had gone together, and the mainmast had broken at a place where a defect was now seen in its heart. Falling over the side, the latter had brought down with it the mizzen-mast and all its hamper, and as much of the fore-mast as stood above the top.
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