While I blinked in the glare, the
mizzen-mast crashed overside. I cannot tell whether the lightning
struck and split it, or whether, already blasted by the explosion, it
had stood upright for those few seconds until a heave of the swell
snapped the charred stays and released it. Nay, even the dead beat
of the rain may have helped.
In all my life I have never known such rain. Its noise drowned the
thunderclap. It fell in no drops or threads of drops, but in one
solid flood as from a burst bag. It extinguished the blaze in the
rigging as easily as you would blow out a candle. It beat me down
prone upon the bowsprit, and with such force that I felt my ribs
giving upon the timber. It stunned me as a bather is stunned who,
swimming in a pool beneath a waterfall, ventures his head into the
actual cascade. It flooded the deck so that two minutes later, when
I managed to lift my head, I saw the bodies of two Moors washed down
the starboard scuppers and clean through a gap in the broken
bulwarks, their brown legs lifting as they toppled and shot over the
edge.
No wind had preceded the storm.
Pages:
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249