followed Black to the platform, and thither came the most part of the crew almost as soon as the bell had ceased to reverberate. Hot and stifling as was the air below, here it was gloriously fresh and cool; and for an instant the delight of breathing it forbade a thought of the hither sea and its story. But only for an instant. The submarine had hardly ceased to run when a shout of savage exultation spoke of our victory, and, looking over at the warship, I learned the truth at a glance.
She lay no more than a cable's length from us, the smoke pouring from her decks. It seemed to me that the Zero had fired her below the water-line, though how she had fired her, or by what devilish contrivance of a madman's brain, I could make no pretence to say. Evil enough to know that the work was done beyond any hope of salvation; and there the gunboat lay, sagging to the swell and already in the vortex of the flame. From her decks there went up such a wail of doomed humanity as I pray never to hear again. We could see her crew fleeing madly to the scanty rigging, fighting amidships, and even cutting one another down at the very davits. Such officers as remained upon the quarter-deck stood motionless, as though paralyzed by swift catastrophe. The smoke, drifting to starboard, revealed the tongues of flame which drove the seamen headlong and already devoured the deck-houses and the bridge. And above it all were discordant voices, the oaths and curses and cries of men in their agony.
Such was the scene which I was called upon to witness as I stood upon the platform of the Zero. If I do not dwell upon it, I would say in excuse that there are pages of the human story which a man does well to turn quickly—and this was one of them. Far otherwise with the men who stood about me. I declare it beyond all compare horrible to have witnessed the frantic derision with which the monsters capered at the spectacle and scoffed at the agonies they had provoked. Not content with viewing their wretched victims at a distance, they must now drive the Zero toward the burning gunboat, and shout their obscenities almost into the very flames. For the poor souls, who flung themselves from the red-hot decks down into the trough of the cool sea, they had but scorn and contumely. I saw them draw revolvers and shoot one wretch whose beard still smoked and whose clothes had been burned from his shoulders. Another they beat off with an iron stanchion, and so much did the poor fellow suffer that he clung to the platform and implored them for God's sake to blow out his brains. This they had done with as little compunction as a man may kill an ox, when there came the crack of a revolver-shot from the blazing vessel, and the great Russian whom I had seen at Dolphin's Cove fell his length upon the platform. In his agony, for they had shot out his eyes, he clutched at my feet as though he had been an animal; but I drew back, nor would I have lifted a hand to save him if my life had been the hazard.
Now, here were the biters bitten; and you never saw such a turnabout in all your days. One of the officers of the Vespa feared death so little, it appeared, that he had drawn a revolver and fired at the wretches who assailed him. Black's fellows now began to roar like bulls; some that we should go astern, others that we should race ahead, but altogether as wild a crew of cowards as sailed the seas that day.
What would have befallen them but for the Captain I cannot tell you; but no sooner had Black realized what was happening than he waved to us to go below; and, catching two of the men, he hurled them down the iron ladder to the engine-room as though they had been children. Taken pell-mell with the others, I found myself presently in the corridor of my cabin, and thither I turned and tried to shut the horrid sights from my eyes. What happened either to us or to the gunboat in the hours that followed I neither cared to know nor to ask. We sank beneath the waves, I remember, and then rose again; I heard the trampling of feet above my head, and then silence fell, and we appeared to be going ahead, but at no great speed. Another hour and some one knocked upon my door, and, when I answered, the nigger Sambo told me that the Captain waited for me in the saloon.