e and
the others be flung to the elements, be blown into portions of the
elements themselves.

Drenched with sweat, paralyzed with terror--it _was_ the terror of an
awful death and not of death itself; livid with horror--though he was
not aware such was the case; his lips parched and glued together; not
knowing whether his limbs were shaking beneath him or the deck of the
cabin quivering before its impending upheaval, his starting eyes
glared round the prison he was in. And as he so glared he saw--if God
gave him a moment more--his opportunity. The great square ports--an
invention of but the last few years and superseding the old small
round ones--furnished that opportunity.

With a gasp--nay, almost a cry--he clambered on the locker beneath the
nearest one--again it seemed as though the ship was quivering with the
impending explosion!--thrust his head and shoulders through, dragged
the sword by his side carefully after him, seized a top chain hanging
down into the water, and was himself in the water a moment later. Then
a nervous, hurried thrust of one foot against the hull, with an
impetus obtained thereby which propelled him a dozen feet from the
vessel, a few masterful strokes made boldly, all trembling with fear
and horror as he was, and he plunged into a puff of black smoke, the
cinders among which hissed on his face as he struck it, and he was
saved--saved from that most awful death, even though countless other
deaths surrounded and loomed up before him; saved, at least, from
being dismembered and flung piecemeal in a million atoms on the bosom
of the ocean.

The smoke drifting in his face recalled to him that he was swimming
toward the English fleet; the current still making toward the shore
told him that he could never reach that fleet. Even as he swam away
from the doomed transport he knew that the powerful tide beneath was
carrying him back; he must change his course, or another moment would
carry his body against the after part of the ship he had but now
escaped from, the ship which must now ere long be hurled out of the
sea! It was easy to do so, however; to turn himself away from her so
that, even though borne back to the coast of Cotentin, he would pass
far astern of her. He had enough strength for that, enough left to
haul himself far out from where she lay--but not much more. He was
sore spent now with all he had gone through, and was borne down also
with the double weight of clothes upon him; as he