By this time our friends were a quarter of a mile in the rear of the burning steamer. The furious pulsations of the engines had stopped, and from stern to stern the great ship was one mass of soothing flame. The light threw a glare upon the clouds above, and made it so bright where our friends were floating in the water that they could have read the pages of a printed book. The illumination must have been seen for many and many a mile in every direction upon the Pacific.
"Yes, the steamer has stopped," said Howard; "the fire has reached the engines, and now they must do as we have done."
"Not half enough of them; and then what they have got will be seized by the crew, as they always do at such times."
"Look! you can see them jumping over. The poor wretches hang fast till they are so scorched that they have to let go."
"It's mighty lucky yees are here," said Tim, "for every mother's son that can swim will be hugged by a half-dozen that can't, which would be bad for me."
"And nothing but this bench to keep us from sinking."
"And be the same towken isn't that good enough, if it only kaaps us afloat? Can't ye be satisfied?"
It was indeed a fearful sight, the steamer being one pyramid of roaring, blazing fire, sweeping upward in great fan-like rifts, then blowing outward, horizontally across the deep, as if greedy for the poor beings who had sprung in agony from its embrace. Millions of sparks were floating and drifting overhead and falling all around. The shrieks of the despairing passengers, as with their clothes all aflame they sprung blindly into the ocean, could be heard by our friends, and must indeed have extended a far greater distance.
For an hour the conflagration raged with apparently unabated violence, the wreck drifting quite rapidly; but the fire soon tired of its work, large pieces of burning timber could be seen floating in the water, and finally the charred hull made a plunge downward into the sea, and our friends were left alone upon their frail support.
"Now, it's time to decide what we are going to do," said Howard.
"You are right, and what shall it be? Shall we drift about here until morning, when some vessel will pick us up? I have no doubt this fire has drawn a half-dozen toward it."