s climbing aloft by way of the well-tarred
shrouds until they reached the sails, when there arose a sudden blaze of
flame among the spars, and in two or three minutes every shred of canvas
had been consumed, and the crawling tongues of fire were circling about
the masts and yards, feebly at first, but steadily increasing until they
were all ablaze. Meanwhile the ship, deprived of her canvas, gradually
fell broadside-on to the wind, and from that position as gradually
drifted round until she lay bows-on to us. By this time we were within
three-quarters of a mile of her, and now that she was no longer driven
to leeward by her sails, we neared her rapidly. But my heart sank
within me as I watched her, for the destruction of her sails, which I
had at first thought a fortunate circumstance,--inasmuch as she no
longer blew away from us,--I now recognised as a dreadful happening;
for, stationary as she now lay on the water, the light draught of wind
had full power to fan the fire that raged aboard her, and by the time
that we drew up under her bows and hooked on to her bobstay, she was a
roaring mass of flames from stem to stern.

I shinned up the bobstay and so got on to her bowsprit, and from there
made my way into her head; but I could go no farther, for the fore part
of her deck was a sheet of fire, upon which no living thing could exist
for more than a few seconds of unspeakable torment, and even where I
stood the heat was all but unendurable. I could not see very far aft
for the flames and smoke. Her fore-scuttle was open, and a pillar of
flame roared out of it as from a chimney on fire; and some ten feet
abaft it was her foremast, ablaze from the deck to the truck; and
immediately abaft it again was the blazing framework of what had shortly
before been a deck-house. Beyond that I could see nothing. One thing
was quite certain, and that was that if there were living people still
aboard her--which I could not believe possible--they must be aft, and it
was there that we must seek them. So I scrambled down into the gig
again, and ordered the men to back off and pull round under the ship's
stern.

They lost no time in obeying my order; and it was well for us all that
they exhibited so much alacrity, for as we swept round and gave way an
ominous cracking and rending sound was heard aboard the ship, and a
moment later her blazing foremast toppled over and fell with a crash
into the sea, missing the gig by a bare boath