om in their heads to think about anything just now.
They know fast enough that the poor old ship will soon blow up, and what
they want to do is to get some more prog, and then row off soon as they
can."

I was going to say more, but I had a warning from the mate to be silent,
and I sat there watching the men make a good many tries before they
reached the cabin-window; but how they did it at last I couldn't quite
make out, for they were in the shadow, while all around them spread the
lurid glare cast by the flames which rose from the burning hold.

These seemed to have reached their greatest height soon after the fire
first broke out, and directly the first cask of spirits had burst. Then
the fire went steadily on till it began to wane slightly, when another
cask would explode, and flames rush up again--those great waves of fire
which lapped and leaped, and floated up out of the hold, appearing from
where we lay to lick the sails hanging from the fore and main-masts.
But these never caught, the golden and bluish waves rising steadily and
spreading to starboard and port, and every now and then sending out
detached waves to float on the black night air for a moment or two
before they died out.

It was very terrible and yet beautiful to see the great bursts of flame
gliding up so softly and silently, almost without a sound; there was
every mast and stay glistening in the light, and the sails that were
hanging from the yards transparent, or half darkened on the main and
mizzen-masts, while those on the fore-mast beyond the fire shone like
gold.

I wondered how it was that the sides of the deck did not begin to burn,
crackling, splitting, and sending up clouds of black smoke dotted with
brilliant sparks, as I had once seen at the burning of a coal brig in
Falmouth harbour; but they did not, and the utter stillness of the
night, in that hot calm, which had on and off lasted for days, had so
far saved the masts.

But as I watched, I felt that their turn must come, and that sooner or
later I should be watching them turned into pyramids--all brilliant
glow--till they fell with a crash, hissing and steaming, into the sea.

I pictured all that clearly enough in my mind's eye, feeling in my
expectancy a sensation of awe as the conflagration went on--this gradual
burning of the spirits in the casks, which kept on exploding one by one
with a singular regularity.

And all the time, as I watched, there in the shadow at the ster