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The Surat Castle in which I was doomed to sail, was most dreadfully crowded; men literally slept upon one another, and in the orlop-deck the standing beds were three tiers high, besides those slinging. Added to this, the seeds of a pestilential disease had already been sown.
Every now and then the splinters, and occasionally also a shot, which fell through the hatchways, showed him that death was being dealt rapidly around just above him; and he dared not therefore move, as he wished to do, to the orlop-deck, into which the shot of an enemy does not often find its way. Then, again, the sound of the water washing about below his feet alarmed him.
Again and again the carpenter sounded the well, and reported that the water had rather increased than diminished. The after-part of the deck was now scuttled, so that more provisions and stores could be got up and hove overboard. The pumps continued to be worked as energetically as at first, but still the water gained on them, till it reached the orlop-deck.
To remedy this evil, no time was lost in lighting a fire in the warming-stove upon the orlop-deck, everything being previously moved from its neighbourhood that was likely to create danger.
The water had now reached above the orlop-deck, and all further attempts were unavailing. The ship was settling fast, and it became necessary to quit her, and haul off the schooner, that she might not be endangered by the vortex of the sinking vessel.
The sight of the rows of guns and ammunition, however, so terrified him that he beat a hasty retreat to his canoe, though he had already got as far as the orlop-deck. Next day two more canoes approached, manned by fierce-looking Malays, bringing bananas, cocoa-nuts, and pineapples, which they bartered for biscuits, a handkerchief, and two small axes.
The riven decks could ill keep out the water which washed aboard her, while many of the beams gave way, and those of the orlop-deck bent and cracked till several of them fell into the hold. Nothing now seemed to stop the entrance of the water. Paul and his old companions exerted themselves to the utmost.
The scene in the orlop-deck was truly distressing: soldiers, their wives and children, all lying together in a state of the most dreadful sea-sickness, groaning in concert, and calling for a drop of water to cool their parched tongues. I screwed myself up behind a butt, and soon fell into that stupor which sea-sickness will create.
Below, in the orlop-deck, the remainder of the crew and the passengers were huddled together in a small space: some were attending to the wounded, who were numerous; others were invoking the saints to their assistance; the bishop, a tall, dignified person, apparently nearly sixty years of age, was kneeling in the centre of the group, which was dimly lighted by two or three lanterns, at one time in fervent prayer, at another, interrupted, that he might give absolution to those wounded men whose spirits were departing, and who were brought down and laid before him by their comrades.
Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and the yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic involutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables and hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a line-of-battle-ship.
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