having no means of knowing the time—for the clock had never been wound, owing to my not being able to find the key—i cannot tell when the change came; but i think it must have been about eight next morning. the vessel suddenly righted, and then began to tumble about in so outrageous a fashion that i thought she must go all to pieces. elsie awoke screaming with fright; and with all you sing’s catlike capacity for holding on, it was some minutes before he could get to her to comfort her. he had not left my side more than ten minutes, when, with a tremendous lurch, the vessel was hurled over to starboard, and i knew that my greatest fear was realized—she had been caught aback! over, over she went, until it was almost possible to stand upright upon the lee bulk-heads of the cabin. in sea-phrase, she was on her beam-ends.
i now gave all up for lost, and waited, hardly breathing, for the crash of the end. the water on deck burst in through every crevice, and rose upon the lee-side until i was obliged to climb up to the fast-clamped settees to windward to avoid being drowned. the uproar on deck was louder than ever, and i fancied83 that i could hear every now and then through the tumult the rending and crashing of spars, and feel the shattering blow of their great masses against the hull alongside. but still the vessel appeared staunch, although every inch of her framework visible in the cabin was all awork.
after what seemed like a whole day, but could only have been two or three hours, she began to right herself, and the din outside grew less deafening. rapidly the howl of the wind moderated, although the vessel still tossed and tumbled about in frantic fashion, until my anxiety to see daylight again got the better of my fears, and i painfully made my way up the companion, opened it, and stepped on to the poop. the sight i beheld took away my breath. the blitzen was a complete wreck. not a stick was standing except the three jagged stumps of the lower masts; the bulwarks were stripped from her sides for their entire length, the house on deck had clean disappeared, and everything that could be torn from its fastenings about the decks had gone also. it was a clean sweep. a cold shiver went through me, such as one might feel upon awakening to find his house roofless and all his household goods exposed to the glare of day. but the sky was clear, the sea was going down, and we were still afloat. a great wave of thankfulness came over me, suddenly checked by the paralyzing thought that perhaps we had sprung a leak. i stood still for a moment while this latest fear soaked in; then, bracing myself up to learn the worst, i hurried forrard to try and find the rod to sound the well. but it had gone, among the84 rest of the carpenter’s gear, with the deck-house, and i was obliged to give up the idea. returning aft, i uncovered the cabin skylight and went below, finding you sing busy preparing some food. then i suddenly remembered that i was ravenously hungry, and we all three sat down and ate our fill cheerfully and gladly. but while we were swallowing the last morsels of our meal, you sing gravely lifted his hand and sat listening intently. there was a strange sound on deck, and it made me almost helpless with fear; for it sounded like the singing chatter of chinese. we sat for a few moments as if suddenly frozen, listening with every faculty, and hardly breathing. then, ghost-like, you sing rose, and, taking the two of us by the arms, gently persuaded us into one of the state-rooms at hand, and signed to us to keep close while he went to investigate. noiselessly he glided away from us and was gone, leaving us a prey to the most harrowing sensations in the belief that all our cruel forebodings were about to be proved true. for some time not a sound could be heard in our hiding-place except the soothing creak of the timbers or the wash of the caressing waves outside the hull. yet i remember curiously how even in that agony of suspense i noticed that the motion of the ship was changed. she no longer seemed to swing buoyantly from wave to wave, but solemnly, stolidly, she rolled, as if the sea had taken possession of her, and bereft her of her own grace of mastery.
a confused thudding sound reached us from above, as if caused by the pattering of bare feet on deck;85 but there were no voices, nor, indeed, any other noises to give us a clue as to what was going on. very soon even that slight sound ceased, and we were left again to the dumbness of our surroundings. the child went to sleep; and i, after perhaps half an hour of strained listening, felt that i could bear this condition of things no longer, for it had seemed like a whole day to my excited imaginings. so, as silently as had you sing long ago, i stole from the little state-room and across the saloon. with all my terrors weighing me down, i crawled, worm-like, up the companion-ladder, and wriggled on to the deck on all-fours. the sea, and the sky, and the barren deck all lay in perfect silence, which pressed upon me like one of those nightmares in which you feel that unless you can scream you must die. after two or three attempts, i moistened my parched mouth and called, “you sing!” there was no voice of any one that answered. but that i think the limit of my capacity for being terrified had been reached some time before, i believe this irresponsiveness, with its accompanying sensation of being utterly alone, would have made me an idiot. as it was, i only felt numbed and tired. slowly i stood up upon my feet, and went forrard to the break of the poop, learning at once the reason of you sing’s silence; for by the side of the after-hatch lay three chinese, naked and dead, bearing on their bodies the grim evidences of the method of their ending. close to the cabin door, as if he had dragged himself away from his late antagonists in the vain hope of reaching his friends again, lay you sing. as i looked down upon him he86 moved slightly. in a moment, forgetting everything else, i was by his side, and lifted his head upon my knee. he opened his glazing eyes and looked up into my face with his old sweet smile, now with something of highest satisfaction in it. his dry lips opened, and he murmured, “’ullo, tommy; all litee.” then the intelligence faded out of his eyes, and he left me.
it must have been hours afterwards when i again realized my surroundings. elsie was sitting by the piece of yellow clay that had been you sing, perfectly still, but with an occasional tearing sob. she must have been crying for a long time. gradually the whole of the past came back to me, and i saw how our dead friend had indeed paid in full what he considered to be his debt to us; although how that mild and gentle creature, in whom i never saw even so much as a shade of vexation, much less anger, could have risen to such a height of fighting valour as to slay three men in our defence was utterly beyond my powers of comprehension. for, without attempting any eloquence of panegyric, that was precisely what he had done, and with his opponent’s own weapons, too. to say that i had not really felt lonely and helpless until now only faintly conveys the appalling sense of loss that had come upon me. as for the poor child, she crouched by the side of the corpse, scarcely more alive than it was, manifesting no fear or repugnance at the presence of death; indeed, she appeared unable to realize the great fact in its full terror.
how long we both sat in this dazed condition it is impossible to say with any definiteness. no doubt it87 was for several hours, for we both seemed only partially alive; and, for my part, the only impression left was that all besides ourselves were dead. that feeling carried with it a dim anticipation that we too might expect to find our turn to depart confronting us at any moment; but in this thought there was no fear, rather relief.
how often, i wonder, has it been noted that in times of deep mental distress, when the mind appears to have had a mortal blow, and all those higher faculties which are our peculiar possession are so numbed that they give no definite assistance to the organism, the animal needs of the body have instinctively asserted themselves, and thus saved the entire man or woman from madness or death? it must surely be one of the commonest of experiences, although seldom formulated in so many words. at any rate, this was now the case with me. gradually the fact that i was parched with thirst became the one conscious thing; and, without thinking about it, without any definite idea even, i found myself on my feet, swaying and staggering as i crossed the bare deck to where the scuttle-butt used to be lashed. finding it gone, i stood helplessly staring at the ends of the lashings that had secured it, with a dull, stupid anger of disappointment. then i began to think; i had to, for my need was imperative. i remembered that you sing had brought into the cabin before the typhoon a store of water sufficient for days. this mental effort was bracing, doing much to restore me again to some show of usefulness. i soon found the water, and hurried on deck once more, for88 the cabin was no place to stay in now. it was tenanted by shapes of dread, full of inaudible signs of woe; and right glad was i to regain the side of the little girl for living companionship. i offered her some water. she looked at it dully, as if unable to attach any idea to it; and it was only by repeatedly rousing her that i managed to awaken any reason in her injured mind at all. in the absence of any such compulsion, i think she would have just sat still and ceased to live, painlessly and unconsciously.
now that the needs of another were laid upon me, i began to move about a little more briskly, and to notice our condition with returning interest. for some time the strange steadiness of the ship had puzzled me without arousing any definite inquiry in my mind as to the cause of it. but in crossing the deck to re-enter the cabin the true significance of that want of motion suddenly burst upon me, for i saw the calm face of the water only a few inches from the deck-line. the blitzen was sinking. during the typhoon she must have received tremendous injuries from the wreckage of her top-hamper, that, floating alongside, entangled in the web of its rigging, was as dangerous as so many rocks would have been. there was urgent need now for thought and action also, for there was nothing of any kind on deck floatable. boats, spars, hen-coops, all had gone. a thousand futile thoughts chased one another through my throbbing brain, but they ran in circles that led nowhere. there seemed to be no possible means of escape. yet somehow i was not hopeless. i felt a curious reliance upon89 the fact that we two small people had come through so much unhurt in any way, and this baseless unreasoning faith in our good (?) fortune forbade me to despair. so that i cannot say i felt greatly surprised when i presently saw on the starboard side forrard a small sampan floating placidly, its grass painter made fast to the fore-chains. there was no mystery about its appearance. it had brought those awful visitors whose defeat caused you sing his life, and was probably the only surviving relic of some junk that had foundered in the storm. the sight of it did me a world of good. rushing to elsie, i pointed out the fact of our immediate danger, and of the hope left us, and after some little difficulty succeeded in getting her into the sampan. the blitzen was now so low in the water that my remaining time was countable by seconds. i flew into the cabin, snatched up a few biscuits and the large can of water that stood in the bathroom, and rushed for the boat. as i scrambled into her with my burden i noticed shudderingly that the ship was beginning to move, but with such a motion! it was like the death-throe of a man—a physical fact with which of late i had been well acquainted. every plank of her groaned as if in agony; she gave a quivering sideway stagger. my fingers trembled so that i could hardly cast adrift the painter, which i was compelled to do, having no knife. i got the clumsy hitches adrift at last, and with one of the rough oars gave our frail craft a vigorous shove off, elsie staring all the while at the huge hull with dilating eyes and drawn white face. presently the blitzen seemed to stumble; a wave upreared itself out of the smooth brightness of the placid sea and embraced her bows, drawing them gently down. so gently, like a tired woman sinking to rest, did the blitzen leave the light, and only a few foam-flecked whorls and spirals on the surface marked for a minute or two the spot where she had been.
happily for us who were left, our troubles were nearly at an end. one calm night of restless dozing under the warm sky, trying not to think of what a tiny bubble we made on the wide sea, we passed not uncomfortably. just before dawn i felt rather than heard a throbbing, its regular pulsations beating steadily as if inside my head. but they had not lasted one minute before i knew them for the propeller-beat of a steamer, and strained my eyes around through the departing darkness for a sight of her. straight for us she came, the watchful officer on the bridge having seen us more than a mile off. in the most matter-of-fact way we were taken on board, and elsie was soon mothered by the skipper’s wife, while i was being made much of by the men. and that was all. of all that mass of treasure that had caused the sacrifice of so many lives not one atom remained where it could ever again raise the demon of murder in human breasts. and although i could not realize all this, i really did not feel sorry that i had not succeeded in saving the slightest portion of it, my thankfulness at being spared alive being so great.
there were no passengers on board to make a fuss, so none was made. three days afterwards we were at hong kong, and elsie was handed over to the german91 consul, who gravely took down my story, but i could see did not believe half of it. i bade good-bye to elsie, having elected to remain by the steamer, where i was being well treated, and in due time reached england again, a step nearer to becoming a full-fledged seaman.
