s in a wood after a hurricane; an
immense curtain of soiled rags waved gently before me--it was the
mainsail blown to strips. I thought, The masts will be toppling over
directly; and to get out of the way bolted on all-fours towards the
poop-ladder. The first person I saw was Mahon, with eyes like saucers,
his mouth open, and the long white hair standing straight on end round
his head like a silver halo. He was just about to go down when the
sight of the main-deck stirring, heaving up, and changing into splinters
before his eyes, petrified him on the top step. I stared at him in
unbelief, and he stared at me with a queer kind of shocked curiosity.
I did not know that I had no hair, no eyebrows, no eyelashes, that my
young moustache was burnt off, that my face was black, one cheek laid
open, my nose cut, and my chin bleeding. I had lost my cap, one of my
slippers, and my shirt was torn to rags. Of all this I was not aware. I
was amazed to see the ship still afloat, the poop-deck whole--and, most
of all, to see anybody alive. Also the peace of the sky and the serenity
of the sea were distinctly surprising. I suppose I expected to see them
convulsed with horror.... Pass the bottle.

"There was a voice hailing the ship from somewhere--in the air, in the
sky--I couldn't tell. Presently I saw the captain--and he was mad. He
asked me eagerly, 'Where's the cabin-table?' and to hear such a question
was a frightful shock. I had just been blown up, you understand, and
vibrated with that experience,--I wasn't quite sure whether I was alive.
Mahon began to stamp with both feet and yelled at him, 'Good God! don't
you see the deck's blown out of her?' I found my voice, and stammered
out as if conscious of some gross neglect of duty, 'I don't know where
the cabin-table is.' It was like an absurd dream.

"Do you know what he wanted next? Well, he wanted to trim the yards.
Very placidly, and as if lost in thought, he insisted on having the
foreyard squared. 'I don't know if there's anybody alive,' said Mahon,
almost tearfully. 'Surely,' he said gently, 'there will be enough left
to square the foreyard.'

"The old chap, it seems, was in his own berth, winding up the
chronometers, when the shock sent him spinning. Immediately it occurred
to him--as he said afterwards--that the ship had struck something, and
he ran out into the cabin. There, he saw, the cabin-table had vanished
somewhere. The deck being blown up, it had fallen down into t