h both of us--in
that shouting blackness of wind, as we clung to the rail to avoid being
blown away, our hands went out to each other and my hand and hers gripped
and pressed and then held mutually to the rail.

"Daughter of Herodias," I commented grimly to myself; but my hand did not
leave hers.

"What is happening?" I shouted in her ear.

"We've lost way," came her answer. "I think we're caught aback! The
wheel's up, but she could not steer!"

The Gabriel voice of the Samurai rang out. "Hard over?" was his mellow
storm-call to the man at the wheel. "Hard over, sir," came the
helmsman's reply, vague, cracked with strain, and smothered.

Came the lightning, before us, behind us, on every side, bathing us in
flaming minutes at a time. And all the while we were deafened by the
unceasing uproar of thunder. It was a weird sight--far aloft the black
skeleton of spars and masts from which the sails had been removed; lower
down, the sailors clinging like monstrous bugs as they passed the gaskets
and furled; beneath them the few set sails, filled backward against the
masts, gleaming whitely, wickedly, evilly, in the fearful illumination;
and, at the bottom, the deck and bridge and houses of the _Elsinore_, and
a tangled riff-raff of flying ropes, and clumps and bunches of swaying,
pulling, hauling, human creatures.

It was a great moment, the master's moment--caught all aback with all our
bulk and tonnage and infinitude of gear, and our heaven-aspiring masts
two hundred feet above our heads. And our master was there, in sheeting
flame, slender, casual, imperturbable, with two men--one of them a
murderer--under him to pass on and enforce his will, and with a horde of
inefficients and weaklings to obey that will, and pull, and haul, and by
the sheer leverages of physics manipulate our floating world so that it
would endure this fury of the elements.

What happened next, what was done, I do not know, save that now and again
I heard the Gabriel voice; for the darkness came, and the rain in
pouring, horizontal sheets. It filled my mouth and strangled my lungs as
if I had fallen overboard. It seemed to drive up as well as down,
piercing its way under my sou'wester, through my oilskins, down my tight-
buttoned collar, and into my sea-boots. I was dizzied, obfuscated, by
all this onslaught of thunder, lightning, wind, blackness, and water. And
yet the master, near to me, there on the poop, lived and moved serenely
in