CHAPTER IV

AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED

Before the woman had time to speak a thunderous step was heard
on the companion stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. The
man's face was injected with blood, his eyes were fixed and
glassy like the eyes of a drunkard, and the veins stood on his
temples like twisted cords.

"Get those children ready!" he shouted, as he rushed into his own
cabin. "Get you all ready--boats are being swung out and
victualled. Ho! where are those papers?"

They heard him furiously searching and collecting things in his
cabin--the ship's papers, accounts, things the master mariner
clings to as he clings to his life; and as he searched, and found,
and packed, he kept bellowing orders for the children to be got on
deck. Half mad he seemed, and half mad he was with the
knowledge of the terrible thing that was stowed amidst the
cargo.

Up on deck the crew, under the direction of the first mate, were
working in an orderly manner, and with a will, utterly
unconscious of there being anything beneath their feet but an
ordinary cargo on fire. The covers had been stripped from the
boats, kegs of water and bags of biscuit placed in them. The
dinghy, smallest of the boats and most easily got away, was
hanging at the port quarter-boat davits flush with the bulwarks;
and Paddy Button was in the act of stowing a keg of water in her,