But even as I bent, the bowsprit shook under me
like a whip, and the deck before me opened in a yellow sheet of fire.
The whole ship seemed to burst asunder and shut again, the flame of
the explosion went wavering up the rigging, and I found myself
hanging on to the forestay and dangling over emptiness. While I
dangled I heard in the roaring echoes another splash, and knew that
Billy Priske had been thrown from his hold; a splash, and close upon
it a heavy grinding sound, a crash of burst planks, an outcry ending
in a wail as the lifting sea bore back the Moor's boat and our own
together upon the Gauntlet's stem and smashed them like egg-shells.
Then, as the ketch heaved and heaved again in the light of the flames
that ran up the tarry rigging, at one stride the dawn was on us; with
no flush of sunshine, but with a grey, steel-coloured ray that cut
the darkness like a sword. I had managed to hoist myself again to
the bowsprit, and, straddling it, had time in one glance aft to take
in the scene of ruin. Yet in that glance I saw it--the yawning hole,
the upheaved jagged deck-planks, the dark bodies hurled to right and
left into the scuppers--by three separate lights: by the yellow light
of the flames in the rigging, by the steel-grey light of dawn, and by
a sudden white-hot flush as the lightning ripped open the belly of
heaven and let loose the rain.
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