ight nothing was
to be seen for a moment; but the darkness was terrific with voices,
voices from forward of the bridge and voices from alongside as though a
hundred drunken sailors were yelling and blaspheming from a quay.

For the tenth of a second the idea of being alongside a quay came to her
with nightmare effect, heightened by a ruffling and booming from the sky
above, a rippling and flapping and thundering like the sound of vast and
tangled wings.

Then a blaze of light shot out, making day.

The arc lamp of the fore-mast, always ready to be used for night work,
had been run up and switched on.

To starboard and stern of the _Gaston de Paris_, a great ship, within
pistol shot of the deck, and with her canvas spilling the wind and
thrashing and thundering, was dipping her bows in the sea. Men were
fighting for the boats, and the stern was so high that more than half of
the rudder shewed like a great door swinging on its hinges. On the
counter in pale letters the word

"_Albatross_"

shewed, and to the mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in
that calm statement, those commonplace letters written upon destruction.

Clinging to the hatch combing she saw, now, as a person sees in a dream,
sailors rushing and struggling aft along the slanting main deck. The
engines had ceased working but the dynamos were running on steam from
the main boilers, and through the noises that filled the night the
sewing machine sound of them threshed like a pulse. What had happened,
what was happening, she did not know. The great ship to port seemed
sinking but the _Gaston de Paris_ seemed safe, but for the horrible
slant of the decks; she called out to the sailors, now clustered here
and there by the boat davits, but her voice blew away on the wind, she
saw Prince Selm, he was struggling aft along the slippery sloping deck,
clutching at the bulwarks as he came, he seemed like a man engaged in
some fantastic game--an unreal figure, now he was on the deck on all
fours, now up again, clutching men by the shoulders, shaking them,
shouting. She could hear his voice. The starboard boats were unworkable
owing to the list to port. She did not know that, she only knew, and now
for the first time, that the _Gaston de Paris_ was in fearful danger.
And instantly the thought came to her of the old woman below in her bunk
and, on the thought, the mad instinct to rush below and save her.

Holding on to the woodwork of the hatch sh