d.

"Listen," said Moran. Far off to landward came the faint, sleepy
clucking of a quail, and the stridulating of unnumbered crickets; a
long ripple licked the slope of the beach and slid back into the ocean.
Wilbur shook his head.

"Don't hear anything," he whispered. "Sh--there--she's trembling again."

Once more a prolonged but faint quivering ran through the "Bertha
Millner" from stem to stern, and from keel to masthead. There was a
barely audible creaking of joints and panels. The oil in the deck-tubs
trembled. The vibration was so fine and rapid that it tickled the soles
of Wilbur's feet as he stood on the deck.

"I'd give two fingers to know what it all means," murmured Moran in
a low voice. "I've been to sea for--" Then suddenly she cried aloud:
"Steady all, she's lifting again!"

The schooner heaved slowly under them, this time by the stern. Up she
went, up and up, while Wilbur gripped at a stay to keep his place, and
tried to choke down his heart, that seemed to beat against his palate.

"God!" ejaculated Moran, her eyes blazing. "This thing is--" The
"Bertha" came suddenly down to an easy keel, rocking in that glassy sea
as if in a tide rip. The deck was awash with oil. Far out in the bay the
ripples widening from the schooner blurred the reflections of the stars.
The Chinamen swarmed up the hatch-way, voluble and shrill. Again the
"Bertha Millner" lifted and sank, the tubs sliding on the deck, the
masts quivering like reeds, the timbers groaning aloud with the strain.
In the stern something cracked and smashed. Then the trouble died away,
the ripples faded into the ocean, and the schooner settled to her keel,
quite motionless.

"Look," said Moran, her face toward the "Bertha's" stern. "The rudder
is out of the gudgeons." It was true--the "Bertha Millner's" helm was
unshipped.

There was no more sleep for any one on board that night. Wilbur tramped
the quarterdeck, sick with a feeling he dared not put a name to. Moran
sat by the wrecked rudder-head, a useless pistol in her hand, swearing
under her breath from time to time. Charlie appeared on the quarterdeck
at intervals, looked at Wilbur and Moran with wide-open eyes, and then
took himself away. On the forward deck the coolies pasted strips of red
paper inscribed with mottoes upon the mast, and filled the air with the
reek of their joss-sticks.

"If one could only SEE what it was," growled Moran between her clinched
teeth. "But this--this damned h