The night of the day in which I had gone below
we were playing a rubber of whist in the cabin when the port-hole
at my head was pushed open, and a voice in broken English shouted,
"Crazee manee; he makee firee, firee!" I jumped round and saw a
Chinaman. Such an expression--Shakespeare alone has described it--
"And with a look so piteous in purport,
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors."
Fire! that epitome of all that is appalling at sea, the danger
each one instinctively dreads, but no one mentions. One ran one
way and one another. The doctor (a real canny Scot, who sings "My
Nannie's awa'" like Wilson) was over the rail and down the hold in
a moment. I ran to Captain Meyer's room on the upper deck and
roused him. He too was down and in the hold like a flash--brave
fellows that they are, these "true British sailors." I waited the
result, knowing that if fire had really started, a general
stampede of Chinamen would soon come from the hatches; but all was
still. How long those few moments seemed! In a short time the
captain returned, looking, in his night-clothes, like a ghost. One
of the crazy men had broken loose from his chains, and the
Chinamen were panic-stricken. The watchman wanted the most
startling alarm, and found it, undoubtedly, in that word fire. It
is all over; but when he next has to sound an alarm let him "take
any form but that.
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