He had the impression of
an angry hand laying hold of the lighter and dragging it along to
destruction. The shock, of course, had knocked him down, and he found
himself rolling in a lot of water at the bottom of the lighter. A
violent churning went on alongside; a strange and amazed voice cried out
something above him in the night. He heard a piercing shriek for help
from Senor Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all the time. It was a
collision!
The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling her over till she
was half swamped, starting some of her timbers, and swinging her head
parallel to her own course with the force of the blow. The shock of
it on board of her was hardly perceptible. All the violence of that
collision was, as usual, felt only on board the smaller craft. Even
Nostromo himself thought that this was perhaps the end of his desperate
adventure. He, too, had been flung away from the long tiller, which
took charge in the lurch. Next moment the steamer would have passed on,
leaving the lighter to sink or swim after having shouldered her thus out
of her way, and without even getting a glimpse of her form, had it not
been that, being deeply laden with stores and the great number of people
on board, her anchor was low enough to hook itself into one of the wire
shrouds of the lighter's mast.
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