a quarter-boat, and the dinghy.
He heard Le Farge's voice ordering the hatch to be closed and the pumps
manned, so as to flood the hold; and, knowing that he could do nothing
on deck, he made as swiftly as he could for the saloon companionway.

Mrs Stannard was just coming out of the children's cabin.

"Are the children lying down, Mrs Stannard?" asked Lestrange, almost
breathless from the excitement and exertion of the last few minutes.

The woman glanced at him with frightened eyes. He looked like the very
herald of disaster.

"For if they are, and you have undressed them, then you must put their
clothes on again. The ship is on fire, Mrs Stannard."

"Good God, sir!"

"Listen!" said Lestrange.

From a distance, thin, and dreary as the crying of sea-gulls on a
desolate beach, came the clanking of the pumps.

CHAPTER IV

AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED

Before the woman had time to speak a thunderous step was heard on the
companion stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. The man's face
was injected with blood, his eyes were fixed and glassy like the eyes
of a drunkard, and the veins stood on his temples like twisted cords.

"Get those children ready!" he shouted, as he rushed into his own
cabin. "Get you all ready--boats are being swung out and victualled.
Ho! where are those papers?"

They heard him furiously searching and collecting things in his
cabin--the ship's papers, accounts, things the master mariner clings to
as he clings to his life; and as he searched, and found, and packed, he
kept bellowing orders for the children to be got on deck. Half mad he
seemed, and half mad he was with the knowledge of the terrible thing
that was stowed amidst the cargo.

Up on deck the crew, under the direction of the first mate, were
working in an orderly manner, and with a will, utterly unconscious of
there being anything beneath their feet but an ordinary cargo on fire.
The covers had been stripped from the boats, kegs of water and bags of
biscuit placed in them. The dinghy, smallest of the boats and most
easily got away, was hanging at the port quarter-boat davits flush with
the bulwarks; and Paddy Button was in the act of stowing a keg of water
in her, when Le Farge broke on to the deck, followed by the stewardess
carrying Emmeline, and Mr Lestrange leading Dick. The dinghy was rather
a larger boat than the ordinary ships' dinghy, and possessed a small
mast and long sail. Two sailors stood ready to man t