; so that, presently, she
became a monster ship.

She came too near to be pleasant, however, without sheering either to
right or aft.

It looked as if she were going to run them down!

Bob and Dick's hopes of a rescue paled before the imminent dread of a
collision that now stared them in the face--nay, was close at hand.

"Shout, Dick! Shout out with me as loud as you can so as to wake them
up on board and make them see us!" cried Bob, letting go the tiller and
standing up on top of the stern locker. "Now, all together, Dick!
Ship, ahoy! Ship, ahoy!"

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

DRIFTING.

"Help, ahoy, look out!" sang out Bob and Dick in chorus, well-nigh
paralysed with fright. "Ahoy there, look out ahead!"

But, in spite of their cries, the phantom ship, whose proportions became
all the more magnified the nearer she approached, rose upon them
steadily out of the mist, growing into a gruesome reality each second,
her hull towering over the little cutter as she bore down upon her, like
a giant above a pigmy!

"Help, ahoy, look out there!" they once more shouted frantically.
"Help--ahoy!"

It was all in vain, though, their shouts and cries being unnoticed.

The next moment the on-coming vessel struck them, fortunately not end-on
or amidships, but in a slanting fashion, her cutwater sliding by the
gunwale of the cutter, from bow to stern, with a harsh, grating sound
and a rasping movement that shook their very vitals--the little yacht
heeling over the while until she was almost on her beam-ends.

Had the vessel caught her midships, she would have at once crushed her
like an eggshell; as it was, the fluke of one of her anchors, which was
hanging from her bows ready for letting go in case of emergency, the
barque being not yet clear of soundings, got foul of the cutter's
rigging, sweeping her mast and boom away, the stays snapping under the
strain as if they were packthread.

Poor little cutter! She was left a complete wreck and nearly full of
water; still rocking to and fro from the violence of the collision, even
after the craft that had done all the mischief had again, seemingly, re-
transformed herself into a phantom ship and faded away in the mist that
hung over the sea, like the creation of a dream!

It was a very bad dream, though; and Bob and Dick gave themselves up for
lost altogether.

Their fate, drifting helplessly about, an hour or so before, hungry and
miserable, had seemed desperate enou