the latter could not distinguish a syllable.

For only a few brief seconds did this last; then it ceased as suddenly
as though a tap had been turned off. An instant later the line of white
water appeared, scarcely a hundred yards distant from the _Chih' Yuen's_
stern. Frobisher had barely time to yell an order to the men on deck to
"hold on for their lives" before the oncoming wave and the attendant
hurricane broke upon the cruiser.

The wave, black, gleaming, and sinister in the sheen of the lancing
lightning flashes, and capped with a ridge of phosphorescent foam, swept
over the cruiser's stern, down upon the quarter-deck, and then forward,
burying the ship in an instant from stern to stem, so that her captain,
up on the navigating bridge, was unable for a few seconds to see
anything of his vessel's decks, the bridge on which he and Drake were
standing--or endeavouring to stand--and the tops of the ventilators
being all of the upper-works that showed above the racing turmoil of
foam-covered water. At the same time Frobisher and Drake were literally
jammed against the quivering rails of the bridge and held there,
powerless to move, by the amazing force of the wind.

A perceptible quiver thrilled through the hull of the sturdy vessel as,
like a live thing, she endeavoured to free herself from that enormous
weight of water, and a few moments later she emerged from the swirl,
which poured off her decks in cataracts. Then, rolling herself free of
the rest of her burden, she was carried irresistibly forward on the back
of the wave, like a chip in the current of a mill-race.

Frobisher gave a big sigh of relief as he saw his ship shake herself
free. "A little longer, Drake, and she would have foundered under our
feet," he managed to gasp; "if she had not been the sturdy craft that
she is, she would not have come up again."

"You're right, sir," replied Drake, wiping the spray out of his eyes;
"that was a narrow squeak, if ever there was one. But hark to the wind!
It must be blowing at ninety miles an hour, at least. I pray that
nothing may get in our way, for we could not possibly avoid it. A
hair's-breadth out of our course, and the ship would broach to and
capsize with us."

Drake spoke truth. Although the sea was absolutely smooth--every
wave-crest being shorn off by the terrific force of the wind almost
before it had time to form--the extremely heavy swell that had arisen
earlier in the evening was still r