st into a dead level of snow. I
could hear no noise of breaking seas nor of rushing water, nothing but
a cauldron-like hissing, through which rolled the notes of the storm in
echoes of great ordnance.

Fortunately, I had no need to clothe myself, since on lying down I had
removed nothing but my coat, collar and shoes. I had a little silver
match-box in my trouser's pocket, and swiftly struck a match and
lighted the lamp and looked at Grace's door expecting to find her
standing in it. It was closed, and she continued to scream. It was no
time for ceremony; I opened the door, and called to know how it was
with her.

"Oh, Herbert, save me!" she shrieked; "the yacht is sinking."

"No," I cried, "she has been struck by a gale of wind. I will find out
what is the matter. Are you hurt?"

"The yacht is sinking!" she repeated in a wild voice of terror.

Spite of the lamplight in the cabin, the curtain and the door combined
eclipsed the sheen, and I could not see her.

"Are you in bed, dearest?"

"Yes," she cried.

"Are you hurt, my precious?"

"No, but my heart has stopped with fright. We shall be drowned. Oh,
Herbert, the yacht is sinking!"

"Remain as you are, Grace. I shall return to you in a moment. Do not
imagine that the yacht is sinking. I know by the buoyant feel of her
movements that she is safe."

And thus hurriedly speaking I left her, satisfied that her shrieks had
been produced by terror only; nor did I wish her to rise, lest the
yacht should again suddenly heel to her first extravagantly dreadful
angle, and throw her, and break a limb, or injure her more cruelly yet.

The companion hatch was closed. The feeling of being imprisoned raised
such a feeling of consternation in me that I stood in the hatch as one
paralysed, then terror set me pounding upon the cover with my fists,
till you would have thought in a few moments I must have reduced it to
splinters. After a little, during which I hammered with might and
main, roaring out the name of Caudel, the cover was cautiously lifted
to the height of a few inches, letting in a very yell of wind, such a
shock and blast of it that I was forced, back off the ladder as though
by a blow in the face, and in a breath the light went out.

"It's all right, Mr. Barclay," cried the voice of Caudel, hoarse and
yet shrill too with the life and death cries he had been delivering.
"A gale of wind's busted down upon us. We've got the yacht afore it
whilst