henomenon, I
heard the helmsman ejaculate, through the open window of the wheel-
house:

"Gosh! that's a big 'un, and no mistake; the biggest I ever seen;
and,"--on a note of sudden alarm--"it ain't goin' to fall so very far
away from us, neither! D'ye see that big fireball, sir, headin' this
way?"

As the man spoke I caught sight of the object to which he referred--and
horror chilled me to the marrow; for never before, I verily believe, had
mortal eyes beheld so awful an apparition. Broad over the port bow, at
an elevation of some forty degrees above the horizon, I beheld a great
white-hot flaming mass, emitting a long trail of brilliant sparks,
_coming straight for the ship_. It was increasing in apparent size even
as I gazed at it, dumb and paralysed with terror indescribable, while
the sound of its passage through the air grew, in the course of a second
or two, from a murmur to a deafening roar, and the light which it
emitted became so dazzling that it nearly blinded me as I looked at it.
As it came hurtling toward us it seemed to expand until it looked almost
as big as the ship herself; but that was, of course, an optical
illusion, for when, a second or two later, it struck us, I saw that the
fiercely incandescent mass, of roughly spherical shape, was some twelve
feet in diameter.

It struck the ship aslant, on her port side, a few feet abaft the funnel
and close to the water-line, passing through the engine-room and out
through her bottom. There was no perceptible shock attending the blow,
but the crash was terrific, while the smell of burning was almost
suffocating--which is not to be wondered at, since the mass was blazing
so fiercely that it set the ship on fire merely by passing through her.
So intense was the heat of it that, as it passed through the ship's
bottom into the water, we instantly became enveloped in a dense cloud of
hot, steamy vapour. A moment later it exploded under us, throwing up a
cone of water that came near to swamping the ship.

For a space of perhaps two seconds after the passage of the meteor
through the ship's hull the silence of the night continued, and then, as
though in response to a signal, there arose such a dreadful outcry as I
hope never to hear again; while the cabin doors were dashed open, and
out from the cabins and the companion-ways streamed crowds of distracted
men, women, and children, clad in their night gear, just as they had
leapt from their berths, the men s