Page:Guy Boothby - The Beautiful White Devil.djvu/208

 lifted, your superior steaming power enabled you to escape us. Then the typhoon caught us, and in looking after ourselves, we lost sight of you altogether. We rode out the storm safely enough, but, just at sun-time yesterday, she struck an uncharted rock and went down within five minutes."

He stopped for a moment and covered his face with his hands.

"This is terrible news!" cried Patterson, while we all gave utterance to expressions of horrified astonishment. "And was yours the only boat that got away?"

"I'm very much afraid so," he replied. "At least I saw no other. Yes, you are right, it is terrible, and Her Majesty has lost a fine vessel and a splendid ship's company in the Asiatic."

When the poor fellow had finished his story he was silent for some minutes. Indeed, so were we all. It seemed almost incredible that the great vessel we had admired, and feared, only the day before, should now be lying, with the majority of her crew, deep down at the bottom of the ocean.

"We are fortunate in having been able to pick you up," said Patterson, after a while. "An hour later and we should have changed our course, and have been many miles away."

"In that case we should have been dead men by nightfall," was the reply. "As it was, we lost one man."

"How did it happen?"

"The poor devil went mad, and jumped overboard. Remember, we had no water and nothing to eat, and so you may imagine it was heart-breaking work pulling