dear life. But he couldn't have told you himself that minute how it
all took place. He was too stunned and dazzled.

He looked around him on the seething sea in a sudden awakening, as it
were, to life and consciousness. All about, the great water stretched
dark and tumultuous. White breakers surged over him. Far ahead the
steamer's lights gleamed red and green in long lines upon the ocean. At
first they ran fast; then they slackened somewhat. She was surely slowing
now; they must be reversing engines and trying to stop her. They would
put out a boat. But what hope, what chance of rescue by night, in such a
wild waste of waves as that? And Muriel Ellis was clinging to him for
dear life all the while, with the despairing clutch of a half-drowned
woman!

The people on the Australasian, for their part, knew better what had
occurred. There was bustle and confusion enough on deck and on the
captain's bridge, to be sure: "Man overboard!"--three sharp rings at the
engine bell:--"Stop her short!--reverse engines!--lower the gig!--look
sharp, there, all of you!" Passengers hurried up breathless at the first
alarm to know what was the matter. Sailors loosened and lowered the boat
from the davits with extraordinary quickness. Officers stood by, giving
orders in monosyllables with practised calm. All was hurry and turmoil,
yet with a marvellous sense of order and prompt obedience as well. But,
at any rate, the people on deck hadn't the swift swirl of the boisterous
water, the hampering wet clothes, the pervading consciousness of personal
danger, to make their brains reel, like Felix Thurstan's. They could ask
one another with comparative composure what had happened on board; they
could listen without terror to the story of the accident.

It was the thirteenth day out from Sydney, and the Australasian was
rapidly nearing the equator. Toward evening the wind had freshened, and
the sea was running high against her weather side. But it was a fine
starlit night, though the moon had not yet risen; and as the brief
tropical twilight faded away by quick degrees in the west, the fringe of
cocoanut palms on the reef that bounded the little island of Boupari
showed out for a minute or two in dark relief, some miles to leeward,
against the pale pink horizon. In spite of the heavy sea, many passengers
lingered late on deck that night to see the last of that coral-girt
shore, which was to be their final glimpse of land till they reached
Honolu