They were certainly strenuous days, but we were well and had good
appetites for the excellent meals which were served to us by our
capable Chinese steward and cook. The doings and sayings of our
cabin boy would fill a book, but he was trustworthy and attended
faithfully to our wants. One night after I had retired, a heavy
thunder storm came up which might have caused us considerable
trouble had not our usual strict discipline been carried out. Having
become so used to confused sounds on deck I did not realize that the
ship had been struck by lightning, though I heard a sound which in
my dozing condition I laid to something falling down in the bathroom.
When the Captain came in to ask if I were all right I sleepily said,
"Why not? I think something has fallen down." He did not tell me
until morning that the ship had been struck and had caught fire aloft.
By changing the course the sparks were made to fall overboard while
men were sent aloft to cut away the blazing fragments. About ten
minutes before the vessel was struck, a dozen men were aloft furling
a sail just where the lightning struck us, and when the storm was
over it seemed a special act of Providence that we still had these
men with us.
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