It was impossible to lower them owing to the mad behaviour of
the panic-stricken crowds, who fought like wild beasts for a place in
them. A few gentlemen and sober-headed sailors could do nothing against a
mob of frantic creatures, each bent on saving his own life, if it cost
the lives of all else on board.
And thus it was exactly twenty minutes from the time that the Kangaroo
sank the whaler (for, although these events have taken some time to
describe, they did not take long to enact) that her own hour came, and,
with the exception of some eight-and-twenty souls, all told, the hour
also of every living creature who had taken passage in her.
CHAPTER VIII.
KERGUELEN LAND.
As soon as Mr. Meeson, saved from drowning by her intervention, lay
gasping at the bottom of the boat, Augusta, overcome by a momentary
faintness, let her head fall forward on to the bundle of blankets in
which she had wrapped up the child she had rescued, and who, too
terrified to speak or cry, stared about him with wide-opened and
frightened eyes. When she lifted it, a few seconds later, a ray from the
rising sun had pierced the mist, and striking full on the sinking ship,
as, her stern well out of the water and her bow well under it, she rolled
sullenly to and fro in the trough of the heavy sea, seemed to wrap her
from hull to truck in wild and stormy light.
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