"Oh, it"s all properly secured," said Ruby, "tight enough; I have no fears on that score, Mr. Falsten."
"But why," asked Falsten, "did you not inform the captain?"
"Just because if I had informed him, he would not have taken the case on board."
The wind dropped for a few seconds; and for a brief interval I could not catch what pa.s.sed; but I could see that Falsten continued to remonstrate, while Ruby answered by shrugging his shoulders. At length I heard Falsten say.
"Well, at any rate, the captain must be informed of this, and the package shall be thrown overboard. I don"t want to be blown up."
I started. To what could the engineer be alluding? Evidently he had not the remotest suspicion that the cargo was already on fire. In another moment the words "picrate of potash" brought me to my feet, and with an involuntary impulse I rushed up to Ruby, and seized him by the shoulder.
"Is there picrate of potash on board?" I almost shrieked.
"Yes," said Falsten, "a case containing thirty pounds."
"Where is it?" I cried.
"Down in the hold, with the cargo."
CHAPTER XI
THE Pa.s.sENGERS DISCOVER THEIR DANGER
WHAT my feelings were I cannot describe; but it was hardly in terror so much as with a kind of resignation that I made my way to Curtis on the forecastle, and made him aware that the alarming character of our situation was now complete, as there was enough explosive matter on board to blow up a mountain. Curtis received the information as coolly as it was delivered, and after I had made him acquainted with all the particulars said, "Not a word of this must be mentioned to anyone else, Mr. Kazallon. Where is Ruby, now?"
"On the p.o.o.p," I said.
"Will you then come with me, sir?"
Ruby and Falsten were sitting just as I had left them. Curtis walked straight up to Ruby, and asked him whether what he had been told was true.
"Yes, quite true," said Ruby, complacently, thinking that the worst that could befall him would be that he might be convicted of a little smuggling.
I observed that Curtis was obliged for a moment or two to clasp his hands tightly together behind his back to prevent himself from seizing the unfortunate pa.s.senger by the throat; but suppressing his indignation, he proceeded quietly, though sternly, to interrogate him about the facts of the case. Ruby only confirmed what I had already told him. With characteristic Anglo-Saxon incautiousness he had brought on board, with the rest of his baggage, a case containing no less than thirty pounds of picrate, and had allowed the explosive matter to be stowed in the hold with as little compunction as a Frenchman would feel in smuggling a single bottle of wine. He had not informed the captain of the dangerous nature of the contents of the package, because he was perfectly aware that he would have been refused permission to bring the package on board.
"Anyway," he said, with a shrug of his shoulders, "you can"t hang me for it; and if the package gives you so much concern, you are quite at liberty to throw it into the sea. My luggage is insured."
I was beside myself with fury; and not being endowed with Curtis"s reticence and self-control, before he could interfere to stop me, I cried out:
"You fool! don"t you know that there is fire on board?"
In an instant I regretted my words. Most earnestly I wished them unuttered. But it was too late--their effect upon Ruby was electrical.
He was paralyzed with terror; his limbs stiffened convulsively; his eye was dilated; he gasped for breath, and was speechless. All of a sudden he threw up his arms, and, as though he momentarily expected an explosion, he darted down from the p.o.o.p, and paced frantically up and down the deck, gesticulating like a madman, and shouting:
"Fire on board! Fire! Fire!"
On hearing the outcry, all the crew, supposing that the fire had now in reality broken out, rushed on deck; the rest of the pa.s.sengers soon joined them, and the scene that ensued was one of the utmost confusion.
Mrs. Kear fell down senseless on the deck, and her husband, occupied in looking after himself, left her to the tender mercies of Miss Herbey.
Curtis endeavored to silence Ruby"s ravings, whilst I, in as few words as I could, made M. Letourneur aware of the extent to which the cargo was on fire. The father"s first thought was for Andre, but the young man preserved an admirable composure, and begged his father not to be alarmed, as the danger was not immediate. Meanwhile the sailors had loosened all the tacklings of the long-boat, and were preparing to launch it, when Curtis"s voice was heard peremptorily bidding them to desist; he a.s.sured them that the fire had made no further progress; that Mr. Ruby had been unduly excited and not conscious of what he had said; and he pledged his word that when the right moment should arrive he would allow them all to leave the ship; but that moment, he said, had not yet come.
At the sound of a voice which they had learned to honor and respect, the crew paused in their operations, and the long-boat remained suspended in its place. Fortunately, even Ruby himself in the midst of his ravings, had not dropped a word about the picrate that had been deposited in the hold; for although the mate had a power over the sailors that Captain Huntly had never possessed, I feel certain that if the true state of the case had been known, nothing on earth would have prevented some of them, in their consternation, from effecting an escape. As it was, only Curtis, Falsten, and myself were cognizant of the terrible secret.
As soon as order was restored, the mate and I joined Falsten on the p.o.o.p, where he had remained throughout the panic, and where we found him with folded arms, deep in thought, as it might be, solving some hard mechanical problem. He promised, at my request, that he would reveal nothing of the new danger to which we were exposed through Ruby"s imprudence. Curtis himself took the responsibility of informing Captain Huntly of our critical situation.
In order to insure complete secrecy, it was necessary to secure the person of the unhappy Ruby, who, quite beside himself, continued to rave up and down the deck with the incessant cry of "Fire! fire!"
Accordingly Curtis gave orders to some of his men to seize him and gag him; and before he could make any resistance the miserable man was captured and safely lodged in confinement in his own cabin.
CHAPTER XII
CURTIS BECOMES CAPTAIN
OCTOBER 22.--Curtis has told the captain everything; for he persists in ostensibly recognizing him as his superior officer, and refuses to conceal from him our true situation. Captain Huntly received the communication in perfect silence, and merely pa.s.sing his hand across his forehead as though to banish some distressing thought, re-entered his cabin without a word.
Curtis, Lieutenant Walter, Falsten, and myself have been discussing the chances of our safety, and I am surprised to find with how much composure we can all survey our anxious predicament.
"There is no doubt," said Curtis, "that we must abandon all hope of arresting the fire; the heat toward the bow has already become well-nigh unbearable, and the time must come when the flames will find a vent through the deck. If the sea is calm enough for us to make use of the boats, well and good; we shall of course get quit of the ship as quietly as we can; if, on the other hand the weather should be adverse, or the wind be boisterous, we must stick to our place, and contend with the flames to the very last; perhaps, after all, we shall fare far better with the fire as a declared enemy than as a hidden one."
Falsten and I agreed with what he said, and I pointed out to him that he had quite overlooked the fact of there being thirty pounds of explosive matter in the hold.
"No," he gravely replied, "I have not forgotten it, but it is a circ.u.mstance of which I do not trust myself to think. I dare not run the risk of admitting air into the hold by going down to search for the powder, and yet I know not at what moment it may explode. No; it is a matter that I cannot take at all into my reckoning; it must remain in higher hands than mine."
We bowed our heads in a silence which was solemn. In the present state of the weather, immediate flight was, we knew, impossible.
After considerable pause, Mr. Falsten, as calmly as though he were delivering some philosophic dogma, quietly observed:
"The explosion, if I may use the formula of science, is not necessary, but contingent."
"But tell me, Mr. Falsten," I asked, "is it possible for picrate of potash to ignite without concussion?"
"Certainly it is," replied the engineer. "Under ordinary circ.u.mstances, picrate of potash although not MORE inflammable than common powder, yet possesses the SAME degree of inflammability."
We now prepared to go on deck. As we left the saloon, in which we had been sitting, Curtis seized my hand.
"Oh, Mr. Kazallon," he exclaimed, "if you only knew the bitterness of the agony I feel at seeing this fine vessel doomed to be devoured by flames, and at being so powerless to save her." Then quickly recovering himself, he continued: "But I am forgetting myself; you, if no other, must know what I am suffering. It is all over now," he said more cheerfully.
"Is our condition quite desperate?" I asked.
"It is just this," he answered deliberately, "we are over a mine, and already the match has been applied to the train. How long that train may be, "tis not for me to say."
And with these words he left me.