ion of small stores
from the cabin lockers, the heat and smoke had become so unendurable
that we could not remain still a moment, indeed so sorely pressed were
we that the poor fellows who had been injured by the lightning, and who
had been brought on deck some time before to save them from suffocation,
were almost _thrown_ over the side into the boat; we scrambled in after
them, and casting off got out the oars, and pulled as fast as we could
from the ship, which in another minute was blazing from stem to stern,
notwithstanding the still pouring rain.

We pushed off in dead silence, and, having pulled far enough away to be
clear of the scorching heat, laid with one consent upon our oars to
watch the conflagration. We had been lying thus motionless upon the
water some three or four minutes, when the mainmast swayed slowly to and
fro for a moment, and then fell with a hissing splash into the water
alongside, a shower of sparks shooting up at the same moment from the
burning bulwarks which had been crushed out by the mast in its fall. We
were watching and remarking upon the way in which the planks of the
topsides were twisting up and opening out from the timbers under the
influence of the tremendous heat, when suddenly an awful recollection
flashed upon me.

"Pull! pull for your lives!" I screamed. "We have forgotten to drown
out the magazine."

Not another word was needed. With one accord the oars dashed into the
water, and you may rest assured that we threw our entire weight and
strength into each stroke, bending the stout ash staves as though they
were pliant whalebone, and all but lifting the boat clear out of the
water.

We had not pulled more than a dozen strokes before there was a violent
concussion, as though we had run stem-on upon a sandbank, the schooner's
sides burst apart, the flaming planks of the deck, with its fittings,
the guns, and everything else upon it, soared into the air in the midst
of a blinding sheet of flame, and then came the dull, heavy roar of the
explosion, and--black darkness.

We ceased pulling as the explosion took place, struck powerless for the
moment at this sudden and terrible destruction which had befallen the
craft so lately our home and ark of safety, and it was only when the
fiery fragments began to fall thickly round us that we took to our oars
once more.

But our troubles had scarcely yet begun, for our oars had hardly dipped
in the water when--_crash_!--there fell