Page 64 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER VI. THE FATE

OF THE ‘HYDASPES”.

n the meanwhile the two boats made straight for the red
Icolumn that uprose like a gigantic torch over the silent
sea.
As Blunt had said, the burning ship lay a good twelve
miles from the Malabar, and the pull was a long and a weary
one. Once fairly away from the protecting sides of the vessel
that had borne them thus far on their dismal journey, the
adventurers seemed to have come into a new atmosphere.
The immensity of the ocean over which they slowly moved
revealed itself for the first time. On board the prison ship,
surrounded with all the memories if not with the comforts
of the shore they had quitted, they had not realized how far
they were from that civilization which had given them birth.
The well-lighted, well-furnished cuddy, the homely mirth
of the forecastle, the setting of sentries and the changing
of guards, even the gloom and terror of the closely-locked
prison, combined to make the voyagers feel secure against
the unknown dangers of the sea. That defiance of Nature
which is born of contact with humanity, had hitherto sus-
tained them, and they felt that, though alone on the vast
expanse of waters, they were in companionship with oth-
ers of their kind, and that the perils one man had passed