gave the blazing flare to Powell and walked aft to
watch the passing of that menace of destruction coming blindly with its
parti-coloured stare out of a blind night on the wings of a sweeping
wind. Her very form could be distinguished now black and elongated
amongst the hissing patches of foam bursting along her path.

As is always the case with a ship running before wind and sea she did not
seem to an onlooker to move very fast; but to be progressing indolently
in long leisurely bounds and pauses in the midst of the overtaking waves.
It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the
_Ferndale_, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye. With the
red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a
wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the
lightless space.

"Close shave," said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised
enough to be heard in the wind. "A blind lot on board that ship. Put
out the flare now."

Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can,
bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon
the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision
of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white
churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying
upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two
destroyed ships. It vanished and there was an immense relief. He told
me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very
thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over. He measured it
(for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which
came over him all at once.

He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual
place saw in the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs. Anthony's
face. She whispered quietly:

"Is anything going to happen? What is it?"

"It's all over now," he whispered back.

He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white
ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had
remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And
it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and
probably had some notion of its nature.

"You stayed here waiting for what would come," he murmured admiringly.

"Wasn't that the best thing to do?" sh