n endless void. In the darkness astern arose a
spear-like puff of crimson flame. Again it appeared and again,
quivering, sinister.

"Damn the _Barclay_; she's torching!" There came a shout from out of
the dark and in an instant two great beams of lambent light cut wide
swaths through the pall. They were too high; they missed the
_D'Estang_ altogether and rested on the _Barclay's_ smoke, which rose
and tumbled and billowed and writhed like a heavy shroud in the ghastly
shafts.

"They 've missed us and are trying to get the _Barclay_. Come on!"
Jack's voice was vibrant with the joy of the test. He was kneeling on
the bridge, a megaphone in his hand. He turned it toward the women.
"Crouch down beside that gun and stay down, please, until this is over."

As he spoke, the leading battleship, the dreadnaught _Arizona_, was
getting her searchlight beams down, and all unseen, the _D'Estang_ and
she were approaching each other at a total speed of thirty-seven knots.

Nearer they came and the destroyer was almost to the great dark blur,
with the shining arms radiating from her like living tails from a dead
comet, when, with terrible suddenness and intensity almost burning, the
_Arizona_ flashed a sixty-inch searchlight directly down on the
destroyer's bridge. Sara stifled a scream and Anne bowed her head to
the deck to shut out the fearful blaze. Armitage, standing upright now
and rubbing open his eyes, saw that the time had come to turn, and
quickly. The _D'Estang_ was approaching the battleship, pointing
toward her port bow. The idea of the manoeuvre was to turn in a
semicircle, passing the _Arizona_ at a distance of about two hundred
yards. He shouted the order.

"Hard--a--port."

There was an instant's silence and the face of the quartermaster was
seen to turn pale in the glare of the relentless searchlight.

"Wheel rope carried away, sir."

Armitage fairly threw himself across the bridge, but Johnson was there
first. Quiet, unemotional Johnson, his hat off now, his hair
dishevelled, and his eyes blazing.

"The helm is jambed hard a-starboard!" he cried.

In an instant the situation crystallized itself into a flashing picture
upon Anne's mind. She had held the wheel on her father's yacht; but it
was not that which made her see. It was divination, which fear or
danger sometimes brings to highly sensitized minds--just as it brought
the same picture to Sara's mind. With helm thus jambed, it meant that