The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn

The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn
By Harry Collingwood
CHAPTER ONE.
THE CATASTROPHE.
It happened on our seventh night out from Cape Town, when we had
accomplished about a third of the distance between that city and
Melbourne.
The ship was the Saturn, of the well-known Planet Line of combined
freight and passenger steamers trading between London, Cape Town,
and Melbourne; and I--Eric Blackburn, aged a trifle over twenty-three
years--was her fourth officer.
The Saturn was a brand-new ship, this being her maiden voyage. She
was a twin-screw, of 9800 tons register, 100 A1 at Lloyd's, steaming 14
knots; and she had accommodation for 432 passengers, of whom 84
were first class, 128 second class, and 220 steerage; and every berth
was occupied, the steerage crowd consisting mostly of miners attracted
to Australia by the rumour of a newly discovered goldfield of fabulous
richness. The crew of the ship numbered, all told, 103; therefore, when
the catastrophe occurred, the Saturn was responsible for the lives of
535 people, of whom about 120 were women and children.
I was officer of the watch, and was therefore on the bridge when it
happened, the time being shortly after six bells in the middle watch, or
say about a quarter past three o'clock in the morning. The weather was
fine, with so moderate a westerly wind blowing that the speed of the
ship just balanced it, the smoke and sparks from the funnel rising
straight up into the air when the firemen shovelled coal into the
furnaces; and apart from the long westerly swell there was very little
sea running. The motion of the ship was therefore very easy, just a slow

roll of four or five degrees to port and starboard, and an equally slow,
gentle rise and fall of the ship over the swell that followed us. The
moon was only four days old, consequently she had set hours earlier,
but the sky was cloudless, the air was clear, and the stars, shining
brilliantly, afforded light enough to reveal a ship at a distance of quite
three miles; it would be difficult, therefore, to imagine conditions of
more apparently perfect safety than those at the moment prevailing
aboard the Saturn. Yet destruction came upon us in a manner, and with
a suddenness, that was absolutely appalling.
I was pacing the bridge from one extremity to the other, keeping a
sharp look-out ahead and all round the ship; and when, at the port end
of my promenade, I wheeled on my return march, there was no sign
that but a few minutes intervened between us and eternity. But as I
approached the wheel-house I became aware of a sudden access of light
in the sky behind me, illuminating the entire ship in a radiance that
increased with incredible rapidity, while at the same moment a low
humming sound became audible that also grew in volume as rapidly as
the light. Wheeling sharply round, to ascertain the meaning of this
strange phenomenon, I heard the helmsman ejaculate, through the open
window of the wheel- house:
"Gosh! that's a big 'un, and no mistake; the biggest I ever seen;
and,"--on a note of sudden alarm--"it ain't goin' to fall so very far away
from us, neither! D'ye see that big fireball, sir, headin' this way?"
As the man spoke I caught sight of the object to which he referred--and
horror chilled me to the marrow; for never before, I verily believe, had
mortal eyes beheld so awful an apparition. Broad over the port bow, at
an elevation of some forty degrees above the horizon, I beheld a great
white-hot flaming mass, emitting a long trail of brilliant sparks, coming
straight for the ship. It was increasing in apparent size even as I gazed
at it, dumb and paralysed with terror indescribable, while the sound of
its passage through the air grew, in the course of a second or two, from
a murmur to a deafening roar, and the light which it emitted became so
dazzling that it nearly blinded me as I looked at it. As it came hurtling
toward us it seemed to expand until it looked almost as big as the ship

herself; but that was, of course, an optical illusion, for when, a second
or two later, it struck us, I saw that the fiercely incandescent mass, of
roughly spherical shape, was some twelve feet in diameter.
It struck the ship aslant, on her port side, a few feet abaft the funnel and
close to the water-line, passing through the engine-room and out
through her bottom. There was no perceptible shock attending the blow,
but the crash was terrific, while the smell of burning was almost
suffocating--which is not to be wondered at, since the mass was blazing
so fiercely that it set