a thing to get light by
hurriedly. You try some day, to see how quickly you can light a candle
by one. When I got the candle lit, I thought of the battle-lanterns
swinging outside all the time. I might have saved myself all that
trouble by using a little common sense. Well. Wait till you stand as I
stood, with your heart in your boots, down in a pit of death, you'll see
how much common sense will remain in your fine brains.

When the flame took hold of the wick, so that I could look about me, I
saw the lady Aurelia lying among the smashed up gear to leeward. She had
been lying down, reading in a sort of bunk which had been rigged up for
her on the locker-top. The shock had flung her clean out of the bunk
on to the deck. At the same moment an avalanche of gear had fetched to
leeward. A cask had rolled on to her left hand, pinning her down to
the deck, while a box of bottles had cut the back of her head. A more
complete picture of misery you could not hope to see. There was all
the ill-smelling jumble of steward's gear, tumbled in a heap of smash,
soaking in the oil from the fallen lamp. There was a good deal of blood
about. Aurelia was lying in all the debris half covered with salted fish
from one of the capsized casks. They looked like huge leaves. She seemed
to have been buried under them, like a babe in the wood. She grew calm
when she saw me. "There are candles under the bunk," she said. "Light
two or three. Tell me what has happened."

I did not answer till I had lighted three or four more candles. "The
ship's on her beam ends," I said. "It's the captain's fault. But never
mind that. I must get you out. Are you badly hurt, do you think?"

"I'm all right," she said with a gasp. "But it's being pinned in here. I
thought I was going to be pinned down while I was being drowned."

"Shut your eyes, please," I said. "Bite your lip. It'll hurt, I'm
afraid, getting this cask off your hand. Are you ready. Now." I did it
as gently as I could; but it made me turn all cold to think of the hand
under all that weight.

"Can you withdraw your hand, now?" I asked, tilting the cask as far up
as I could.

"No," she said. "Look out. I'll roll out." In another two seconds she
was sitting up among the crockery with her face deathly white against
the bulkhead; she had fainted. There was a water-carafe on a bracket up
above my head. I splashed her face with water from it till she rallied.
She came to herself with a little hysterical