Perhaps they might hunt for Captain Ferragut among the boatloads of survivors, wishing to bear him off as their triumphant booty....

No, he would far rather give up his life!...
The seamen had unfastened the life boats and were beginning to lower them, when something brutal suddenly occurred with the annihilating rapidity of a cataclysm of Nature.
There sounded a great explosion as though the world had gone to pieces, and Ferragut felt the floor vanishing from beneath his feet.

He looked around him.

The prow no longer existed; it had disappeared under the water, and a bellowing wave was rolling over the deck crushing everything beneath its roller of foam.

On the other hand, the poop was climbing higher and higher, becoming almost vertical.