A REVIEW. 



289 



the danger in a tenfold degree. The ship was new, her timbers were dry and resinous not, 

 as is the case with sea-worn vessels, saturated with salt, and therefore less inflammable, 

 but converted into rapid fuel by the unusual heat, which from some cause, explained or 

 unexplained, was perceptible at a great distance from her boilers ; the crew, though young 

 and efficient, and more than one-half of them practised servants of the Company, were yet 

 strange to the ship, not even having had their various duties assigned to them, nor 

 familiar with the persons of their officers, as became evident afterwards from the dis- 

 crepancies in their statements of names ; the wind was blowing a gale in the direction 



THE "LONDON." 



which would most readily extend a conflagration from the probable source of fire to the 

 stern, where the majority of passengers were congregated ; the time was midnight ; many 

 of the officers, weary with their previous exertions, were recruiting their strength by a brief 

 repose ; most of the seamen and all the passengers were buried in sleep ; the sea was in a state 

 of commotion ; the place was the Bay of Biscay, the dread of outward-bound mariners ; the 

 boats, though unexceptionable as to number, capacity, and quality, were not stowed in the 

 usual simple way, but rested on brackets, from which it was necessary for them to be lifted 

 before they could be lowered even into that foaming ocean. Suddenly the cry of FIRE ! is 

 shrieked out ; the bell is set a-ringing the death-knell the knell of sudden, inevitable, 

 agonising death to many a stout heart on board that proud but perishing ship. He must 

 sleep soundly who failed to hear that piercing cry and the heartrending shrieks which 

 took it up. Some thought it of no consequence : ( We will dress, and hasten on deck, 

 that we may help to extinguish it/ But there were some who knew better; they could 

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