ilence. "I have
sailed these seas before; and although I have never seen the sky looking
quite so threatening as it does now, there were much the same
premonitions before the great hurricane of 1889, when more than twenty
thousand Chinamen were drowned, and hundreds of junks, sailing ships,
and steamers were destroyed, and their wreckage strewn up and down the
coast. I was in the old _Barracouta_ at the time; and although she was
as well-found a craft as ever I sailed in, I never expected her to live
through it. It would be a queer state of affairs if we were to drop
across the enemy now, sir, wouldn't it? The men would have a pretty job
serving the guns, and no mistake!"

"An action, with a swell such as this running, would be an utter
impossibility," was Frobisher's reply. "Before long we shall be having
all our work cut out to take care of ourselves, without troubling to
attempt the destruction of the other fellow. And by Jove, Drake! I
believe it's coming now."

Drake glanced apprehensively behind him, and there, _sure_ enough, just
below the inky curtain of blackness on the northern horizon, which was
now being rent in every direction by continuous lightning flashes, could
be seen a long line of whitish colour, which, there could be no doubt,
was approaching the ship with more than the speed of an express train.

Frobisher had scarcely uttered the words before the darkness was rent by
the most terrifically vivid flash of lightning that he had ever seen,
while simultaneously the air was shattered by a clap of thunder of such
frightful volume that the cruiser jarred and shivered from stem to
stern, as though she had taken the ground at full speed; indeed, for
some seconds Frobisher was not at all sure that they had not happened
upon some uncharted shoal. And while all hands were still cringing
involuntarily from the shock, there came another dazzling flash of
lightning, apparently within a few yards of the vessel, followed
immediately by peal on peal of thunder, which rolled and reverberated
over the sea as though all the great guns in existence were being fired
at the same time within a few miles of them.

Then the rain came down as it only can in those latitudes--as though the
bottom of an enormous tank had been suddenly knocked out; the roar of
that colossal volume of water beating on the deck being such that,
although Frobisher put his mouth to Drake's ear and shouted with all the
power of his lungs,