‘Oh my God!’ cried the voice of Alphonse in French, ‘I cannot move this cask. Help! help!’
Then I could hear the voice of Captain Regnier roaring in the distance as though he had put his head into the hatchway and was crying to his nephew through it.
‘Oh, Alphonse, release me, save me, I cannot open the door!’ I shrieked.
He answered in a voice of agony, but what he said I could not catch, and this was followed by a sound of furious wrestling outside. Another wild and frantic cry from Captain Regnier rang through the cabin, and now the words uttered at the top of his powerful voice reached me. They were, ‘If you do not come instantly we must leave you behind to perish.’ Again I caught a noise of desperate wrestling. It ceased.
‘Oh, Alphonse, do not leave me!’ I screamed. ‘Do not leave me to be drowned in this dreadful berth!’ and I strained my ears but I heard nothing to tell me that the young Frenchman was outside; nevertheless I stood listening, supporting my tottering and swaying figure by holding to the handle of the door, for though I had heard his uncle call to him to hasten on deck or he would be left to perish, I could not believe that he would leave me to drown--that Alphonse would abandon me to a dreadful fate though all the others should quit the brig. I thought to myself, he has rushed on deck to remonstrate with Captain Regnier; he is now imploring his uncle and the others to descend and help him to remove the cask and liberate me, for I had heard him exclaim that the door was blocked by a cask, and I recollected that one immense cask or barrel had stood under the ladder which conducted to the deck; and remembering this I supposed that when the brig had violently leaned over, the cask had torn itself from its fastenings and been hurled by the slant of the deck against the door of my berth, where it lay jammed, immovably holding the door.
I stood listening, I say, but the minutes passed and I heard nothing--nothing, I mean, that resembled a human voice or the movements of men; otherwise there was no lack of sounds--horrible, dismal, affrighting noises, a ceaseless thumping as of wreckage pounding against the sides of the brig, a muffled, most melancholy whistling and wailing of wind, a constant rattle and roar of cargo in the hold, a frequent shock of sea smiting the window of my cabin and filling the air with a sharp hissing and boiling, as of the foot of a great cataract.