A slight recovery on the part of the stricken _West Barbican_ enabled Peter and the skipper to gain the weather bridge rail, the former securing a lifebelt from the chest by the side of the chartroom.
It was a weird and terrible sight that met Mostyn's eyes as he clung to the rail. The vivid flashes of lightning threw the scene into strong relief as the bluish glare illumined the night.
Not only was the ship listing to port. She was well down by the stern, her poop being practically submerged. From the lee side of the boat-deck a row of empty davits overhung the black water, the lower blocks of the disengaged falls flogging the ship's side like a series of blows with a sledge-hammer.
A cable's length away was one of the boats with only half a dozen people in her. Another more laden was a little distance away, the rowers laying on their oars. A third, deep in the water, was laboriously putting away from the ship. A fourth, waterlogged, with her bow and the top of the transom showing above the surface, was drifting at some distance astern of the ship, while a fifth was floating bottom upwards with five or six lascars struggling to clamber upon the upturned keel.
"We'll have to shift for ourselves, Mostyn," said the Old Man calmly. "The best of luck!"
The people in the sparely manned boat, noting the skipper and the Wireless Officer on the bridge, began to back towards the foundering ship.
"Avast there!" bawled Captain Bullock. "Stand off. Keep clear of the suction. She's going!"
With a shudder like an animal in mortal pain the staunch old ship made her final plunge. Amidst the rending of wood, as the enormous pressure of confined air burst the decks asunder, and the crash of the funnel as the guys carried away, she slid stern foremost beneath the waves.
Then a violent rush of water swept Peter off the shelving planking of the bridge. He was conscious of being flung heavily against some solid object, turned round and round like a slowly spinning top, and being dragged down, down, down.
Vainly he tried to keep his breath. The pressure on his lungs became intolerable. He was barely conscious of struggling madly in the crushing embrace of the black water.
Acting Chief Officer Dick Preston, on receiving the Old Man's order to get the boats away, lost no time in getting to the scene of operations. The frantic rush of the lascars to the boat-deck warned him of what to expect. He had seen the panic-stricken clamour of a crew of white-livered dagoes, had watched them tumble pell-mell into the sole remaining boat, and had witnessed the result--a swamped whaler and twenty men struggling for dear life, and struggling in vain in the icy cold water off the Newfoundland Banks. That was many years ago, but the lesson had not been lost on Dick Preston.