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As my hand went out to the knob of the chart-house door again the mate's voice rang out: "Come on, you gentlemen's sons in disguise! Wake up! Lively now!" I did not sleep well. To begin with, I read late. Not till two in the morning did I reach up and turn out the kerosene reading-lamp which Wada had purchased and installed for me.
A sailor was knocked overboard, the carpenter was killed outright, two other men were seriously wounded, and Hozier received a blow on the forehead from a flying scrap of metal that stretched him on the deck. The gunners on shore had not allowed for the drifting of the ship. That second shell was meant to demolish the chart-house and clear the bridge of its occupants.
"Keep her a good full a rap- full; but don't let her fall away. Hold her to it, and drive her." He took no notice whatever of me, although I, on my way to the lee of the chart-house, stood at his shoulder a full minute, offering him a chance to speak.
I heard no movement of men, no voice shouting orders, yet before that last gleam faded, I had seen outlined several figures on the bridge. To better assure myself that no watch was upon the after deck, I circled the cabin, and then, crouching in the shadow of the rail, advanced even with the chart-house.
But, just as he was looking at the stricken ship through his glass, to see whether she had surrendered, he was deafened and well-nigh stunned by an appalling explosion which came from somewhere astern of the Angamos; and pieces of wood and iron, fragments of charred human bodies, exploding cartridges, and wreckage of all descriptions began to hurtle round his ears; while, from the shelter of the chart-house, to which he precipitately retreated, he saw an enormous column of black smoke hanging over the place near which he had last seen the Huemul; and he had little difficulty in accounting to himself for the disaster.
Ravens croaked within him; misshapen imps whispered evil omens; his spirit sat in gloom. Christobal, well knowing how the demons of doubt and despair were afflicting Courtenay, followed him to the upper deck. Boyle was in the chart-house and Tollemache.
We are no longer sailing. In last night's darkness we helplessly listened to the men loosing headsail-halyards and letting yards go down on the run. Under orders of Mr. Pike I shot blindly and many times into the dark, but without result, save that we heard the bullets of answering shots strike against the chart-house. So to-day we have not even a man at the wheel.
In it, lyin' across the steam steerin' wheel, was Captain Freeman, unconscious. His face was so blistered that his eyes were nearly shut. His hair was singed right down to the skull. His hands were raw an' bleedin'. His clothes were scorched into something that was black an' brittle. The harbor-master lifted him, an' laid him on the chart-house bunk." "What others were there?"
The two strange craft were coming along at a great rate, and rising above the horizon very quickly; thus, by the time that Mildmay returned to the deck with his glasses in his hand, the leading ship was almost straight ahead, and had risen sufficiently to show her chart-house above the horizon, and to enable "the skipper" to see that she carried a wheel-house on top of the fore end of it, and a short awning abaft the wheel-house.
They visited every part of the vessel, from the forecastle storerooms to the tunnel of the screw shaft, and from the chart-house to the bottom of the hold, and every question either of the friends asked was replied to fully and without hesitation. That evening, like the preceding, they passed with the Coburns.
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