A Queer Race: The Story of a Strange People — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 A QUEER RACE. tents of a cask of rum (which we found on board), put a second cask in the middle of the pile, fired it in several places, and when it was fairly alight, got into the dingey and returned to the Diana with Smithers and McKean. ‘‘Sheis ag dry as a bone,” said Bucklow, ‘‘ and will burn like matchwood.” . ‘©Cast her off!’ he cried, as soon as we were on board. ‘¢ By Jove, look there!” ‘I'he hawsers were covered with rats trying to escape, and as they reached the guards and could get no further, those behind thrust the foremost into the sea. Hven when the hawsers were loosed the rats continued their mad flight, and went on pushing each other to certain destruction. In a few minutes smoke and flame were coming up the brig’s hatchways; then the deck took fire; great tongues leaped up and twisted like fiery serpents round the masts, and the Lady Jane was all ablaze frum stem to stern. ‘The timber in the hold also took fire, and when the sea broke in and extinguished it, the loosened logs of wood were floated out of the hull; and as the fever ship disappeared, a loud cheer went up from the surviy- ors of the Diana’s crew. - eee CHAPTER X. MUTINY. THE destruction of the brig lightened every heart on board. Sailors are proverbially superstitious, and the scenes they had witnessed and the anxiety they had endured had made a deep impression on the remnant of the Diana’s crew, and wound them up to a high pitch of ex- citement. As our misfortunes had begun with the Lady Jane, the poor fellows thought they would end with her. Having, moreover, come to regard Captain Peyton as a Jonah, they looked on his tragic death as at once a judg- ment and an cxpiation, and made sure that now he was gone the luck would change. | ) Even Bucklow, educated man as he was, could not help sharing in this hallucination; and the alacrity with which he changed the ship’s course, and the energetic Gom Cc JOO cS (E(0)