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Updated: May 12, 2025
They pushed him gently towards the shed. When he was under the ring-bolt, near the stool, they made him turn round and they read him something in Russian, doubtless less for him than for those there who did not understand French. Rouletabille had hard work to hold himself erect. The gentleman of the Neva said to him further: "Monsieur, we now read you the final formula.
Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her side; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe; climbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though hacked in pieces.
My station was at the third gun from the head of the ship, on the starboard side of the lower gun-deck close by where the cable passes. The water then rushed in at nearly all the port-holes of the larboard side of the lower gun-deck, and I directly said to Carrell, "Ned, lay hold of the ring-bolt, and jump out of the port-hole; the ship is sinking, and we shall all be drowned."
The end of the line I made fast to the ring-bolt in the bow, and with the hook out of sight I waited for the next opportunity to use it. Once more they made their leeward pull down the port side of the Lancashire Queen, and once more we churned down after them before the wind. Nearer and nearer we drew, and I was making believe to reach for them as before.
"Did you hear my orders?" said my father, in the sharp military way in which he spoke sometimes. Morgan went to the ring-bolt, and began to unfasten the rope, when at the first quiver the boy half started up and remained crouching, ready to spring away. "Shall I go on, sir?" said Morgan. "Yes; slacken the rope sufficiently to let him reach the man."
I showed her that I was holding on to a ring-bolt in the deck, and that the risk I ran when thus lying down was not so great as she had supposed. As I was speaking, I saw a sea rising high above the bows of the vessel. I had just time to grasp her in my arms, and to spring under shelter of the companion-hatch, before it broke on board, and rushed as others had done along our deck.
As we drifted alongside the boat I hove the rope's-end; the man caught it, and collapsing, rather than stooping, with it, he made it fast to the ring-bolt in the stem.
He laid hold of the ring-bolt, and jumped out at the port-hole into the sea: I believe he was drowned, for I never saw him afterwards. I immediately got out at the same port-hole, which was the third from the head of the ship on the starboard side of the lower gun-deck, and when I had done so, I saw the port-hole as full of heads as it could cram, all trying to get out.
How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near the foot of the fore-mast.
He hastily unfastened the rope from the ring-bolt in the bows, and secured it to the boat-hook by a hitch or two, and then cast it overboard. "There!" he said; "that will buoy it, and I'll come out to-morrow and get it up somehow."
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