ard a chuckle as I reached the ladder; but Ready was no longer
in my mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as I stood aghast on the
top-most rung.

CHAPTER III. TO THE WATER'S EDGE

It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not that
the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot out
those who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cart
shoots a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-load
struggling, floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and which
of us is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; for
I saw all this across an impassable gulf of fire.

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard of
the flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to the
lips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out and
up.

Could I jump it there? I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feet
across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity.
I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say,
than because my common sense did not.

Some were watching me, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!" they
screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in token that
I heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding I
noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind was
not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in a
dead calm.

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared to
move an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the scorched
bulwarks burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up, desperate with the
pain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide to balance me, I walked
those few yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling sea
and rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by God's grace without
mishap.

There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about
anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more
pregnant than the last. And yet I did think that those who had
encouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed me
alive among them; they were looking at something else already; and this
was what it was.

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had a
bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw
him dancing in front of the