her an awkward situation.

Steam was therefore ordered for full speed--about seventeen knots--and
the _San-chau_ began to move more rapidly through the water, at the same
time altering her course so as to pass outside the islands instead of
through the Chang-shan-tao channel, as had at first been intended.

The sun set luridly in the midst of a blaze of wild and threatening
cloud, and the light breeze which they had so far carried with them
suddenly died away to nothing, leaving the surface of the sea like a
sheet of oil, through which the _San-chau_ drove her bows as through
something solid. The air felt heavy and damp, and so devoid of life
that Frobisher found it difficult to supply his lungs with sufficient
air; and although the weather was intensely cold, the atmosphere still
felt uncomfortably oppressive.

About two hours later, while the ship appeared to be steaming through a
sheet of liquid fire, so brilliant was the phosphorescence of the water,
there came, without the slightest warning, the most dazzling flash of
lightning Frobisher had ever beheld, followed almost on the instant by a
deafening peal of thunder, indicating that the centre of disturbance was
almost immediately overhead. So dazzlingly bright was the flash that
almost every man on deck instinctively covered his eyes with his hands,
under the impression that he had been blinded; and several seconds
elapsed before any of them were able to see again distinctly.

As though that first flash had been a signal, the air at once became
full of vivid darting lightnings, so continuous that an almost
uninterrupted view of the sea, from horizon to horizon, was possible,
and the man on the look-out in the bows was therefore enabled to give
timely warning of the approach of a white-capped wall of water of
terrible aspect. So rapid was its rate of travel that the steamer's
skipper had barely time to make a few hasty preparations to meet it, and
to shout to the men on deck to "hold on for their lives", when, with an
unearthly howl and roar, the storm was upon them. The wall of water
crashed into and over the _San-chau_ with a power that made it appear as
though she had struck something solid; and for a few moments Frobisher,
clinging to the bridge rail beside the captain and Wong-lih, could see
nothing of the deck of the ship, so deeply was she buried in the wave.
The wind, too, wrestled with and tore at ventilators, awning stanchions,
and the boats slung f