"I'll attack you again when I come back," muttered his chief officer as he went down the ladder.
And the lamp showed him, in spite of the fog, what had happened. The fore-deck was a mass of ripped and twisted plates, splintered doors, and fragments of the interiors of cabins looked strangely small and tawdry out on the harsh deck. A settee-cushion, all burst and impaled upon a piece of angle iron, impeded him. "Won't be spoken to that fashion!" he muttered, holding up the lamp and peering into the murk. "Good Lord! The forecastle's carried away." He stumbled nearer. There was no ladder on this side any more. The high sharp prow had struck a glancing blow just abaft the anchor and sliced away the whole starboard side of the forecastle. Standing where the door of the bosun's room had been, Mr. Spokesly lowered his lamp and saw the black water rushing past between the torn deck-beams. And Mr. Spokesly had it borne in upon him that not only was Plouff vanished, but his cabin was gone. There was scarcely anything of it left save some splintered parts of the settee and the inner bulkhead, on which a gaudy calendar from a seaman's outfitter fluttered in the night breeze against the blue-white paint.
Mr. Spokesly's heart was daunted by the desolation of that brutally revealed interior. It daunted him because he could imagine, with painful particularity, the scene in that little cabin a few moments before. He had looked in at the door a day or two since, and seen Plouff, a large calabash pipe like a cornucopia in his mouth, propped up in his bed-place, reading a very large book with marbled covers which turned out to be the bound volume of a thirty-year-old magazine picked up for a few pence in some port. He could see him thus engaged a few moments ago. Mr. Spokesly gave a sort of half-sob, half-giggle. "My God, he isn't here at all! He's been carried away, cabin and bunk and everything. Smashed and drowned. Well!"
He felt he couldn't stop there any more. It was worse than finding Plouff's mangled body in the ruins. To have been wiped out like that without a chance to explain a single word to any one was tragic for Plouff. Mr. Spokesly gave a shout.
"Anybody down there?" There was no answer. He found himself wondering what the captain's comment would be upon Plouff's sudden departure for parts unknown. He tried to convince himself that there was no reason for supposing him to be dead. He saw him sitting up in his bunk in the sea, still clasping the large book and smoking the trumpet-shaped pipe, and indulging in a querulous explanation of his unusual behaviour. Which would not be his fault for once, Mr. Spokesly reflected. No doubt, however, Captain Rannie would log him for deserting the ship. Mr. Spokesly went aft and looked at the boat near which he had been standing when the collision happened. It was hanging by the after davit, a mere bunch of smashed sticks. Trailing in the water and making a soft swishing sound were the bow plates and bulwarks which had been peeled from the forepart of the _Kalkis_ by the sharp prow of the stranger. And yet she seemed to have suffered nothing below the water-line. Mr. Spokesly, who knew Plouff kept the sounding rod in his cabin, wondered how he was going to sound the wells. He thought of the engineer, stepped over to the port side to reach the after ladder, and pulled himself up short to avoid falling over a huddled group gathered alongside the engine-room hatch.