he fore-hatchway; it
was that of old Popples, the boatswain.

"What! are they all gone?" he shouted; "then I'm captain. Lend a hand,
Mr D'Arcy, and we'll try and get the ship before the wind."

"Captain of a sinking ship you may be, Mr Popples," I answered, amused,
even in that moment of horror, at the old man's extraordinary ambition.

But there was no time for talking. I sprang on deck, as he had done,
and at the same instant a cry reached our ears, and looking to leeward,
we saw the faces of several of our shipmates, clinging to the spars and
rigging, which still hung on to the ship.

At first, surrounded as they were with the seething foam, their
countenances convulsed with terror or agony, as they clung with their
death-grasp to the rigging, it was difficult to recognise them; while,
one by one, they were torn from their uncertain hold, and borne far away
to leeward. Still some clung on. I trusted my friend Dicky Sharpe
might be of the number; for even then, strange as it may seem, I
pictured to myself the grief and misery his loss would cause at that
home where I had lately seen him the hope and joy of a loving mother and
affectionate sisters. These thoughts occupied scarcely a second. In a
few moments I recovered from the sensation of almost overwhelming horror
which the scene had caused; and, as I gazed more attentively, I
recognised Dicky himself, with Captain Cranley, and the master, yet
clinging to the rigging.

The watch below, whom the boatswain had summoned, joined us without
delay; and I must do him the justice to say, that no one could more
nobly have exerted himself than he did in trying to save those who would
speedily deprive him of his new-fledged honours. The foremast and its
rigging, in falling, had torn away the chain-plates and everything which
secured it forward; and the whole tangled mass of spars and ropes now
hung on by the after-shrouds, and had both served to put the brig before
the wind, by holding back her stern, while it allowed her head to pay
off, and acted also as a sort of breakwater, which saved us from being
pooped. The poor fellows in the water were crying loudly for help as
they caught sight of us on deck. One of the nearest was Dicky Sharpe.
Calling Jack Stretcher to my aid, I got him to heave a rope with a bight
at the end which I had made. It fell close to Dicky's head. He grasped
it with one hand, and slipped it over his shoulders. We hauled on it
till we got