f mate, who asserted, with quite
unnecessary vehemence, that it was absolutely the first time that the
_Esmeralda_ had ever been beaten by _anything_ in moderate weather. It
thus came to pass that at midnight our companion was dead to windward of
us, and about seven miles distant.

My lady passengers had retired to their berths about an hour before; but
Sir Edgar, tempted by the beauty and cool freshness of the night,
lingered on deck, and--both of us being shod with rubber-soled shoes in
order that we might not disturb the repose of the sleepers below--was
pacing the weather side of the poop with me, and relating some of his
former adventures as a traveller, before he had settled down as a sober,
steady, respectable Benedict--as he laughingly put it. Suddenly, as we
turned in our walk, within arm's length of the binnacle, we became
conscious of a vivid increase of light, and at the same moment an
indescribable, deep, hurtling roar smote upon our ears above the
startled cry of the helmsman, the loud hum of the wind in our rigging,
and the sobbing wash of the sea. The sound and the light so obviously
came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our
gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times
the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that
our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole
ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, and equipment, was
as brilliantly illuminated as at noonday. It was passing, at no very
great apparent speed, immediately over our mastheads, in a
south-easterly direction, leaving a long trail of evanescent sparks
behind it, and as we watched we could see that it was falling toward the
sea.

"God of mercy--the ship, the _ship_!" gasped Sir Edgar, clutching my arm
in a grip that left its mark on the skin for days afterward; and, as he
spoke, the huge incandescent mass fell full upon the hull of the
_Northern Queen_. There was a flash like that of a bursting shell on
board her, and ere we could draw a breath the stately fabric of her
spars and sails collapsed and vanished into the deep before our eyes!

For some seconds we were all, fore and aft, so paralysed with horror and
dismay that not a sound escaped our lips. Even the weird night music of
the wind and sea appeared to be hushed for the moment, or our startled
senses failed to note it, and presently there came floating down to us
up