I understood in a flash, and sped up the decks--with not one second to
spare. The upper deck was a shambles. I scrambled up the bulwark straight
in front and sprang out as far as I could. Before I struck the water I
heard the roar of a mighty explosion behind, and dived to avoid the after
effects. When I came up, the sea all round was thrashing under a hail of
falling timbers and fragments, but mostly beyond me because I was so close
in to the ship. I took one big breath and sank again, and then a mighty
swirling grip, which felt like death itself, laid hold on me and dragged me
down and down till I looked to come up no more.

It let me go at last, and I fought my way up through fathomless heights of
rushing green waters, with the very last ounce that was in me, and lay
spent on my back with bursting head and breaking heart, staring straight up
into a great cloud of smoke which uncoiled itself slowly like a mighty
plume and let the blue sky show through in patches.

After the thunder of the guns, and that awful final crash, everything
seemed strangely still. The water lapped in my ears, but I felt it rather
than heard. Without lifting my head I could see, not far away, the ship we
had fought, gaunt, stark, the ruins of the masterful craft that had raced
so boldly for us two hours before. Her rigging was a vast tangle of loose
ropes and broken spars, and some of her drooping sails were smouldering.
Her trim black-and-white sides were shattered and scorched and blackened.
It looked as though she had sheered off just a moment before the explosion,
and so had missed the full force of it, but still had suffered terribly.
Some of her lower sails still stood, and her crew were busily at work
cutting loose the raffle and beating out the flames. But damaged as their
own ship was, they still had thought for possible survivors of their enemy,
and two boats dropped into the water as I looked, and came picking their