I forget them with their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths,
and the cruel ascending fire glinting on their starting eyeballs!

Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced
amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling
through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon
it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong
into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and
undone with terror. Upon these turned Captain Harris, as Ready
and I, stemming the torrent of maddened humanity, regained the
poop ourselves.

"For'ard with ye!" yelled the skipper. "The powder's underneath
you in the lazarette!"

They were gone like hunted sheep. And now abaft the flaming
hatchway there were only we four surviving saloon passengers, the
captain, his steward, the Zambesi negro, and the quarter-master at
the wheel. The steward and the black I observed putting stores
aboard the captain's gig as it overhung the water from the stern
davits.

"Now, gentlemen," said Harris to the two of us, "I must trouble
you to step forward with the rest. Senhor Santos insists on taking
his chance along with the young lady in my gig. I've told him the
risk, but he insists, and the gig'll hold no more."

"But she must have a crew, and I can row. For God's sake take me,
captain!" cried I; for Eva Denison sat weeping in her deck chair,
and my heart bled faint at the thought of leaving her, I who loved