ung
over, and the tense moment passed.

"Frightened?" queried Quarrington when he had made fast the mainsheet.

Magda smiled straight into his eyes.

"No. We almost capsized then, didn't we?"

"It was a near shave," he answered bluntly.

They did not speak much after that. They had enough to do to catch
the wind which seemed to bluster from all quarters at once, coming in
violent, gusty spurts that shook the frail little vessel from stem to
stern. Time after time the waves broke over her bows, flooding the deck
and drenching them both with stinging spray.

Magda sat very still, maintaining her grip of the wet and slippery
tiller with all the strength of her small, determined hands. Her limbs
ached with cold. The piercing wind and rain seemed to penetrate
through her thin summer clothing to her very skin. But unwaveringly she
responded to Michael's orders as they reached her through the bellowing
of the gale. Her eyes were like stars and her lips closed in a scarlet
line of courage.

"Port your helm! _Hard_! . . . Hold on!"

Then the thudding swing of the boom as the _Bella Donna_ slewed round on
a fresh tack.

The hurly-burly of the storm was bewildering. In the last hour or so
the entire aspect of things had altered, and Magda was conscious of
a freakish sense of the unreality of it all. With the ridiculous
inconsequence of thought that so often accompanies moments of acute
anxiety she reflected that Noah probably experienced a somewhat similar
astonishment when he woke up one morning to find that the Flood had
actually begun.

It seemed as though the storm had reached out long arms and drawn the
whole world of land and sea and sky into its turbulent embrace. Driving
sheets of rain blurred the coastline on either hand, while the wind
caught up the grey waters into tossing, crested billows and flung them
down again in a smother of angry spume.

Overhead, it screamed through the rigging of the little craft like a
tormented devil, tearing at the straining canvas with devouring fingers
while the slender mast groaned beneath its force.

Suddenly a terrific gust of wind seemed to strike the boat like an
actual blow. Magda saw Michael leap aside, and in the same instant came
a splitting, shattering report as the mast snapped in half and a tangled
mass of wood and cordage and canvas fell crash on to the deck where he
had been standing.

Magda uttered a cry and sprang to her feet. For an instant her heart
seem