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But my foot was still on the hawser, and I felt that it was steadily, although very slowly, yielding, and there was a moment when I could almost have sworn that I felt the ship jerk ever so slightly sternward. So I ventured to stimulate the men a little further. "Hurrah, lads," I cried, "there she moves! Hang to her! One complete turn of the windlass and she's all your own! Heave again."
But how the gods repent when they have sunk men in the blackest pit of despair, sending them a messenger of hope to steady their hearts! Good fortune had willed that we should be so placed upon the deck that we faced most easily sternward.
She hung thus for perhaps half a minute, settling visibly all the time; finally she staggered, as it were, once more to an even keel, but with her stern dipping deeper and deeper every second until her taffrail was buried, while her battered bows lifted slowly into the air, when, the inclination of her decks rapidly growing steeper, she suddenly took a sternward plunge and vanished from sight in the midst of a sudden swirl of water that was distinctly visible through the lenses of the telescope.
The hastily-fired torpedoes diverged and struck the two French battleships instead of the Britain. Two mountains of foam rose up under their sterns, their bows went down and rose again, and with a sternward lurch they slid down into the depths. The Britain swung round to port, and poured a broadside into the Liberte, which had just crippled the Hindustan, and sunk her with a torpedo.
Old Bill, meanwhile, stood aft by the taffrail with the lead- line in his hand, anxiously noting the shoaling water as the smack drifted sternward toward the wreck. "Hold on, for'ard," he shouted at last, when the little Seamew had driven so far in upon the sand that there was little more than a foot of water beneath her keel when she sank into the trough of the sea.
They could see rolling sternward immense volumes of thick smoke, gleaming yellow under the light of the blazing fires; and the figures of men looming like giants in the glare of the garish flames, some standing in front of the furnace, others moving about, and actively engaged in some species of industry, that to the eye of any other than a whalesman might have appeared supernatural.
Hence will arise a demand for accommodation for each screw in a tube forming part of the lower hull itself and open at the side for the taking in of water, while the stern part is equally free. In this way there is evolved a kind of compromise between the two principles of marine propulsion, by a screw and by a jet of water thrown to sternward.
On the chart table lay a pocket lamp, facing sternward, the light pouring upon what looked to be a map; and over it were bent three faces, one of which was Cunningham's. A forefinger was tracing this map. Dennison opened the door and stepped inside. "How are you making out, Newton?" he asked, calmly. "Denny? Why, God bless me, boy, I'm glad to see you! How's your dad?" "Reading."
Snowball, having swept the surface of the Catamaran with a quick, searching glance, and missing from it not only its captain, but what was of greater moment his own protege, became equally the victim of surprise and consternation. His eye was at once turned towards the water; and, like all men accustomed to the sea, was intuitively directed sternward.
He began to let himself back toward his acceleration chair. He could not possibly have climbed forward. It was a horrible task to let himself down, with triple his normal weight pulling at him and after the beating taken a little while ago. Sweat stood out on his skin as he lowered himself sternward.
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