For some moments a deadly stillness followed the sickening shiver of steel and of woodwork; but it was a stillness of terror and foreboding. The screws of the yacht had ceased to work; steam poured up in fleecy, hissing volumes from her engine-room; failing to head the waves, she was washed by them until she lay a heavy, rolling mass deep down in the sea. As for her men, they had come up almost with the reverberation of the shot, and stood—many of them half naked—dumb with the terror of the scene and its development. All was now still below, where dreadful cries had been heard for a moment after the shot fell; the smitten ship rolled heavily to starboard, flooded with spray and water, her desperate plunges foretold beyond questioning that the end of it all was near.
At this time it did not appear possible that the Semiramis could float for an hour. Although the cruiser ceased to fire at her, and lay playing upon her with the spreading radiance of her magnificent light, every man on deck awaited the moment when his body should shrink under the cold touch of the sea, and he should be drawn down in the vortex at once to death and to burial.
This very uncertainty, and the fact that the yacht continued to float in the face of her sore plight, added pitiably to the sufferings of the men. Burke had staggered upon deck at the first shock, and now stood muttering on the bridge, unable to gather his wits for a coherent order. The others, holding for shelter to the safety-line rigged aft, neither spoke nor thought of aught but the near prospect of death. Again, as in the other crisis, it was the voice of the one-legged man, Joe, who brought them all to their senses.
"Be gor! gemmelen," cried he, stumping aft with a quick step, "you go for blazes, sahs, and no mistake; you get your next slops mighty hot, sahs; you all go in the devil's foretop, and sign for long time, gemmelen—oh, yes, be gor!"
He stumped away, and shouted, now mocking, now inciting the crew to action, until even Burke was aroused at his words.
"You, there!" cried he to a small group of lascars and of seamen huddled up near the windlass. "Where's Nicolini?"
Nicolini was the engineer, but he and his "second" lay dead in the engine-room; and when no one answered Burke, the skipper turned to Parker—
"Don't stand shivering like a calf!" he roared. "Sound her for'ard, and see where she's hit; and aft, there, strip that gun and see if there's shot that's dry."
They bustled up at his orders, and although the ship lay heavy in the trough of the seas, they began to work both the Nordenfelt guns, and to pour, as it seemed, a futile stream of shot and bullets at the cruiser, which was now preparing to get the life-boat from the davits and to board the yacht before she sank. So clear was this that the near proximity of the new danger of capture drove, for a moment, all thought of the other from the men's minds; and they looked about them for weapons, with fierce threats upon their lips. Anon, they observed that the lifeboat had actually been launched, and they beheld her coming toward them, the great arc of light illuminating her path, and showing her, now thrown high upon a mount of water, now cast deep into the fallow of the sea; and the discovery moved them even to a greater intensity of savage anger. Yet this would have availed them no more than their loud defiance had not a very curious turn of fortune befriended, and for the hour, at any rate, diverted all the peril of this intrepid attack.
The chance came in the very instant when the Nero's boat was not a hundred yards away from them. How it was brought to pass they could scarce realize; but of a sudden the light of the cruiser went out and left blackness upon the sea. Scarcely daring to speak or to hope, the men of the Semiramis waited to hear the coming of the boat, but it never came. Twice the cruiser fired a gun, but no shell hissed over them; and when a third gun was fired, after an interval, they were sure it was a signal of recall to the boat. Then, indeed, an expectation of safety, newer, stronger, more potent, led them from their cowering laissez-aller; and as Burke roared the order for the hand-pumps to be worked, and for new soundings to be made, a ray even of cheerfulness moved them to activity.
At the end of half-an-hour, during which time they waited in momentary expectation of seeing the search-light again, dawn began to break upon the sea, being the morning of the fifth day. The first thought of all the men was for the cruiser, but when the night lifted, they saw her a long way off on their port bow, and no smoke came from her funnels, nor did she appear to contemplate any further pursuit. In fact, at the end of an hour she had almost disappeared, and Burke instantly called a conference in the cabin, while every hand worked for his life to pump out the engine-room, or to set upon the two short masts every stitch of canvas they would bear.
Burke's views were simple.
"We're knocked fair and square," said he, "with a hole big ez a barn door. From what I've learned we can't look to mend it this side of Spain."
"Will the yacht float that long?" asked Kenner, when he had heard the opinion.
"Maybe; maybe not," said Burke; "but the sea's fallin' and there's the boats."
"Wal," said Kenner, "I don't see where the boats come in—leastwise, not if you're going to take the yaller load along."
"What I can't quite understand," interposed Messenger, "is the reason they let us go at the very moment they were on top of us."
"You've to enquire down in their engine-room, I guess, to larn that," said Burke. "You may bet a bottle they didn't drop it because a fly settled on 'em."
"Do you think you can make Corunna with the rags you've got?" asked Kenner.
"I can try," replied Burke; "an' if it happens ez I don't—wal, you ain't much worse off than swimmin' abed here."
This was not an untrue reflection upon the condition of the saloon, into which the sea had poured until every cushion reeked of damp; and some of the kegs of gold even splashed in rolling pools of water. Everywhere below, in fact, the yacht was sodden with water; and although her custom was to stand up well under canvas, she now half buried herself in the long seas, and plunged ahead with heavy shocks and shivering labour. To live on her became a compulsory picnic, where the food was got haphazard, and was eaten with the salt which the waves cast. Once or twice she passed ships, and signalled to them that she needed no assistance; but the men, wearying in the work, became stupid with liquor, and lay about wet to the skin, or shivering with the deadly chill of exposure, which for many was to pass so soon into the chill of death. All that day and the next the stupor and inanition hung like a pall upon those who had made so great a cast for fortune, and upon their masters who had conceived it. To many of these a moment's warmth, a ray of heat, the shelter of a dry coverlet, would have been worth ten times their share of the vast plunder which now swam in the lapping seas of the saloon. But for them there was no relief. Water washed in the galley fires; the engine-room was full of it; the whole yacht reeked of it; and in the general desolation the men cried for land as children cry for the homes they have left and the havens of their comfort.
At what time—if ever—this wretched ship would have made Corunna no man may presume to tell. On the night of the eighth day the voyage ended abruptly, and with a mighty shock which, at the very moment of its coming, ended the yacht's history. She had struck hard upon the rocks of the northern coast of Spain; and as the seas rolled over her, and the men screamed in their terror, the commanding voice of Burke was heard crying—
"Shoreward, if you'd live! and every man for himself!"
"'SHOREWARDS, IF YOU'D LIVE!'"
X. INTO THE UNKNOWN HAVEN
Burke's