But the maniac has already eluded his confinement, and with singed hair and his clothes already alight, rushes upon deck.

Like a salamander he passes across the burning deck with unscathed feet, and glides through the stifling smoke with unchoked breath.

Not a sound escapes his lips.
Another loud report; the long-boat is shivered into fragments; the middle panel bursts the tarpaulin that covered it, and a stream of fire, free at length from the restraint that had held it, rises half-mast high.
"The picrate! the picrate!" shrieks the madman; "we shall all be blown up! the picrate will blow us all up." And in an instant, before we can get near him, he has hurled himself, through the open hatchway, down into the fiery furnace below..