SIX HOURS AT THE PUMPS.

Evening Star, Issue 6711, 1 October 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

SIX HOURS AT THE PUMPS.

Shipwrecked, eh? Well, do, I've Bever been thip wrecked yet; buS Iwm ence a , gocd deal nearer It thau I ever want to be again; and if a man's hair c»n turn grey in a tingle night, as some folks say it oan, that night's work ought to have turned mine &9 grey as a badger. lc was my fourth voyage, t nd se were homeward bound, from Bomtay to Souihampton, with a full nurcbtf tf passengers. I was only a youugater then, and, liko all young haudj, I'd a gruat loaging fcr a taste of " tha perils of the tea/' and all tha" sort of thing. Bat when I did get a taste of i them, as you'll see pre Bunt iy, I didn'G l:ke 'em quite so well as I expected. We wcte several days out frem Bombay, and it might be about 250 miiea from the Lie of Socotra, which lies in between Afrio * and Arabia, as I dare say you recollect I was fourth effiaer that voyigs, bythe-"by. The weather had been splendid from the very first, and looked like stt-yicg so right through. All the people wuo bad been sick were getting quite britk cgvn, and everybody was as jjlly as cfuld be. About eeven o'clock one fina tvanirg we wore all on deck, watching tha tuuet and calculating how soon we should be in the Rsd Sea, when my attention was attiaoted by our third effioer, Hiriy Lee, whi was a ! Bpecial ohum of mine. Hs was a Blim young fellow, not much older than myself, but 000 laa a cucumber and brave as a 11m. I was juat going up to have a word with biro, when I saw him lift his head and begin sniffing the air uneasily, like a startled deer. Then he slipped down the ladder leading from the hurricane deck iato the waist, and went hither and thither for a moment or two in a bapht.zwd kind of way, just as a do£ does wrea he's lookiag out fir a snug place to lie down. I cou'd Bee that hla behaviour puzz'ed the other officers quite as much as it did me. Before any of ua could say a word, back he came egain, and going up to the ciftsin, said something ia such a low voics that I could only oatoh one word of it. But even the'i one was quite enough to double ma up for tho moment as if I'd been hit by a cannon ball. The word that I caught was '•Fire!" To try a man'a nerve in real earne * I don o thick ihere's anything in the werld like a fir 3at tea, A tire on land is bsd enough, where y'.u have a obanca of ruacing away from 15; but at sea. where y.u're hemmed in between fire on the one aid s and water on the other, iv'a liko nothing I can thiak of except the feeling ycu sometimes h%ve in a bad dream, when you sec something terrible come ru*h!i)g down upon you, ani then suddenly find yourself rooted to tho ground, aod not able to etir a limb to escapa. Show me the man whi c»n fsc3 a sudden alarm of fire on board ship without wincing, and I'll show you tho bravest man on the face of the earth.

Bat it's one good cf suc'i a shook as that that when the first stun is over it braces you up at once. We ill felt that cur only chance was to keep caol and do oar beat, and wa drew ourselves together to do it, " Mr Lee," faid the csptain quite coolly, though his hard eld mouth was Bet like a trap «s he said it, "the passengers mußfc know nothing of this, whatever happens. Just go aft and gat them down into the saloon for some music, and then, as soon as you o&a get away withcui being notioed, ccme here and lend us a hand." Away went Harry accordingly, and presently we hoard his voice down on the after-deck as brisk and cheery as if there was csthiog the matter. Djwu trooped the passeegtrj in a body, for Lae wai a great favori e with thf m, and was always getting up something for their amusement. Ia another minute or two vse hoard the piano going, and one of the young fellow* singing a comic BOPtr, with a'.l the rest j lining in the choius :

My uncle went out to fish one day, When 'twas just a-gettl»g dark, And something pulled so hard at Mb line lhat he thought he'd hooked a Bhark.

Instead of a shark, twas the hull of a ship That had sunk i here a yea? beioie; But just as he'd got it the line broke short, And down went the ship once more.

I*, did send a shudder through us all, I can tell you, to hear them so merry, and 8 ngicg eo careisesly about ships gobg down, and all ihar, with death gapiog fjr them all the while. Bat there wss no lima to tbir.k of It just then. Well, the captain called up our men, end told tbemthat there was fire ia the forehold, and that the sooner they put it out the better, lie said it no lightly and cheeiily that you might have thought the whole buuueos was a mere trifle, asd that they had nothing to do but to go and queuch the fire at once. But as he JSoished t peaking I saw that he had bitten his lower lip until it bled.

To work we went, then, one and all. We knew hotter than to take off the hatches and lei; in the air upon the fUmea, so we cut holes in the planking, and trained the nozzles of the hose-pipes through them. Then we began pumping away with all our might.

But jußt as the work was in full swing two cf the passengers—young fellows just married, who were going heme on leave—osme on deck suddenly, and saw at the first glance what; was going oh. " Gentlemen," said the captain, going up to them, "we didn't expeos you here ju*t now; but since you are here you mutt please stay and help U9. We can't let you g3 back now." Oae of them agreed at once, but the other begged hard to be allowed to go and see his wife before he began. However, tinoaptain wouldn't hear of it; so at last he went and fell to work alongside of his comrade, and they both stuck to it like men right on to the end.

But work as we might the fire seemed to gain upon us, and between ten and eleven at night the hatches had to go. Tin num.mt they ware off up spouted a roiriog j t of flame twelve feet and more above the deck, with such a fury that I began to lesa heart, fur there seemed to be no chance of mastering thai. Bat we weren't at the worafc rf it yet, for all at ones I bbw our chief officer turn pale as death, as he gurgled out, 83 if the wojd3 choked him, " The gunpowder!'' When I heard him say that, it turned me quite sick and faint, for 1 knew well enough what he meant. Ia that very forehold, and cloce to the place where the fire was at its worst, there were eight ammanitian-case?, containing powder enough to blow the whole ship to bits. For a moment we all stood like so many statues; but just then we heard old Ciptain Weatherby's voice clear atd cool as ever : " I won't order any man on such a job as that; tut we muss get that powder up somebow. Who'll follow me?''

Down he went, and he nardly down before there were six of us boeido him.

We flow atthepowcUr chests and tugged thorn oui of their [hoes one by one, while the men on deck kept pouring down a perfect cataract of water to fight off the flames from ua. What with the smoko and steam, the stilling heat, tho shouting of m;n, and the roar cf the Are, tho dancing and flashing of faoes and arms out of the darkness and into it again, and the feeling that at any moment we might all be blown into the air together, it was just like being in the thick of a battle.

I One, two, three chests wore banded up on deck. We had hard work with the fourth aud fifsh, but we managed them at last, and then the sixth and tha seventh. When It 1 came to the last, I felt as if something must hacpon; but up it went, aid prcssntly I found myself oh dick again, hardly knowing how I got there, scorched and bruised and half choked, aud black a3 a sweep from hoad to foot. It was nine at night when we bfgan to pump ; it was three in the mornii'g before the danger was fairly over. Tdß passengers know nothing of it uctil it was all done, and then wo made as light of ii as we could. But I can tell yeu that, although I'm not more of a coward than other men, I don't think anything on rarth could tempt me to go through those six hours again.—'Tit Bits.'