Without the slightest warning they had tried to sink her; and now that she was escaping the further attentions of the field pieces, a number of troops stationed on South Point and the Isle des Fregates began to pelt her with bullets.
Iris, when the first paralysis of fear had passed, when her stricken senses resumed their sway and her limbs lost their palsy, flinched from this new danger, and sank sobbing to her knees behind the canvas shield of the bridge.

Somehow, this flimsy shelter, which sailors call the "dodger," gave some sense of safety.

Her throbbing brain was incapable of lucid thought, but it was borne in on her mistily that the world and its occupants had suddenly gone mad.

The omen of the blood-red water had justified itself most horribly.

The dead carpenter was sprawling over the forecastle windlass.