take in sail!"

We had hauled the trysails and other fore and aft canvas, which was
comparatively useless to a steamer when running before the wind at the
time we had altered course towards the south, in quest of the ship in
distress, the _Star of the North_ speeding along with only her fore-
topsail and fore-topgallantsail set in addition to her fore-topmast
staysail and mizzen staysail and jib.

The gale, however, had increased so much, the wind freshening as it
shifted more and more to the north that this sail was too much for her,
the canvas bellying out, and the upper spars "buckling" as the vessel
laboured in the heavy sea, the stays taut as fiddle-strings and
everything at the utmost tension.

The skipper perceived this now, when almost too late.

"Let go your topgallant bowline, and lee sheet and halliards," he roared
out, holding on with both hands to the rail and bending over the bridge
cloth as he shouted to the men forward who had tumbled out of the
forecastle on the boatswain's warning hail. "Stand by your clewlines
and by your boat lines!"

The men sprang to the ropes with a will, but ere they had begun to cast
them off from the cleats an ominous sound was heard from aloft, and,
splitting from clew to earring, our poor topgallantsail blew clean out
of the boltropes with a loud crack as if a gun had been fired off, the
fragments floating away ahead of us, borne on the wings of the wind like
a huge kite, until it disappeared in the dark _chiaraoscura_ of the
distant horizon, where heaven and sea met amid the shadows of night.

Just then a most wonderful thing happened to startle us further!

While all of us gazed at the wreck aloft, expecting the topsail to
follow suit before it could be pulled, though the hands were racing up
rigging for the purpose, the halliards having been at once let go and
the yard lowered, a strange light over the topsail made us look aft,
when we saw a huge ball of fire pass slowly across the zenith from the
east to the west, illuminating not only the northern arc of the sky, but
the surface of the water also, immediately beneath its path, and making
the faces of the men in the rigging and indeed any object on board,
stand out in relief, shining with that corpse-like glare or reflection
produced by the electric light, the effect being weird and unearthly in
the extreme!

At the same instant one of the lookouts in the bows who had still
remained at his post and had probably