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“In a few minutes things began raining down onto the deck–blocks, bulls’-eyes, and sea-boots. The bombardment raised a commotion, though none of the brutes was hit.

“Yet the sick and sore lion responded to the extent of bounding aft and mounting the poop. Here he came within range of us fellows up the mizzen, and I had the disconnected mizzen-staysail halyard-block in my hand ready for him. He gained the space abaft the house near the wheel and stood still, lashing his tail and nosing the air as though he smelled us up aloft.

“He was only about forty feet down; and when young I had been a good ball-player. I leaned over and let that block go with all my strength. It wasn’t the ordinary shell-block, but a solid carving of lignum-vitae; and it fetched that lion a smash on the head that must have cracked his skull, for he sank down, then got up and wabbled, rather than walked, forward along the alley to the poop-steps.

“There he blindly fell off the poop; and the rhino, whom he had dodged on the run aft, was ready for him. It wasn’t a fight. The lion was dying, and the rhino simply hastened the job, goring him relentlessly until the bleeding carcass lay still.

“Then the rhino, flushed with victory, went for the nearest brute, a wild ass, and soon he had the whole of them–asses and zebras–kicking the stomach out of him, or into him, perhaps, by the way he bellowed.

“It was funny, in a way, for they were all too quick for him; they could dodge that plunging beast with his murderous horn, and turn for a kick before he got by.

“But there was nothing funny about that water in the hold, nor in the prospective job of stopping the leak, pumping her out, and bending new canvas, in case we could get that rhinoceros out of the way. He was the only thing we feared now, for the rest were not really dangerous unless you got too close.

“We knew the wolf and the hyena would run from a man with a handspike, and the zebras and asses would run from a man without one. To make matters worse, darkness closed down. So, lashing ourselves to the crosstrees, we slept more or less sweetly until daylight.

“When we took stock of things, we knew that all was up with that bark. Her plank-sheer amidships was awash, and the water rolling in a green body from starboard to port and back again.

“The crazy elephant stood under the hatch, squealing and trumpeting in fright. He must have smashed the monkeys’ cages during the night, for the rigging was dotted with chimpanzees, orangs, and the small fellows. The hyena and the wolf had gained the forecastle-deck, and stood, side by side, looking aft, with no thought of quarreling in this emergency.

“The sleepy old hippo was lumbering round in the flooded waist as though he enjoyed his salt-water bath; and the rhino was forward on the main deck, looking at the water as it washed up to him and receded. Amidships was a thick, black ring of about two feet diameter, sliding round in the wash.

“It was the two big snakes, each a sheath for the other, but each dead as a door-nail; either they had died from the strain, or the water had drowned them. The zebras and wild asses were also forward, but mostly out of sight behind the house. Not a cobra could be seen, however, and the skipper displayed sudden energy.

“‘Something must be done,’ he said vehemently. ‘You men stay here while I make the attempt to get to the top of the forward house. If I can make it without trouble, the rest of you can follow. We must clear away the boats, for there is no saving this ship.’

“So saying, he gripped the mizzen-stay and slid down it to where it ended at a band on the main-mast just above the fife-rail. From there he dropped to the deck and made a bee-line for the starboard side of the house to avoid the rhino, who was forward on the port side.