I've seen him brace himself that same way many
a time in a tough sea with the spray going mast-head high and green
water pouring along the decks.
"I saw the captain, I say, at the same instant I saw that ruin coming
down on us. I don't know why, but that last glimpse of poor Muggah on
his bridge will stay with me just as long as I remember St. Pierre and
that will be long enough.
"In another instant it was all over for him. As I was looking at him he
was all ablaze. He reeled and fell on the bridge with his face toward
me. His mustache and eyebrows were gone in a jiffy. His hat had gone,
and his hair was aflame, and so were his clothes from head to foot.
I knew he was conscious when he fell, by the look in his eyes, but he
didn't make a sound.
"That all happened a long way inside of half a minute; then something
new happened. When the wave of fire was going over us, a tidal wave of
the sea came out from the shore and did the rest. That wall of rushing
water was so high and so solid that it seemed to rise up and join the
smoke and flame above. For an instant we could see nothing but the water
and the flame.
"That tidal wave picked the ship up like a canoe and then smashed her.
After one list to starboard the ship righted, but the masts, the bridge,
the funnel and all the upper works had gone overboard.
"I had saved myself from fire by jamming a metal ventilator cover over
my head and jumping from the fo'c's'l head. Two St. Kitts negroes saved
me from the water by grabbing me by the legs and pulling me down into
the fo'c's'l after them.
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