r which seemed to take to itself the shape of a
mountain shut its green eye without as much as a preparatory wink.

Mr Powell drew a free breath. "All right now," said Captain Anthony in
a quiet undertone. He 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 stupidit