About ten o'clock at
night he was alone on the poop, in charge, keeping well aft by the
weather rail and staring to windward, when amongst the white, breaking
seas, under the black sky, he made out the lights of a ship. He watched
them for some time. She was running dead before the wind of course. She
will pass jolly close--he said to himself; and then suddenly he felt a
great mistrust of that approaching ship. She's heading straight for
us--he thought. It was not his business to get out of the way. On the
contrary. And his uneasiness grew by the recollection of the forty tons
of dynamite in the body of the _Ferndale_; not the sort of cargo one
thinks of with equanimity in connection with a threatened collision. He
gazed at the two small lights in the dark immensity filled with the angry
noise of the seas. They fascinated him till their plainness to his sight
gave him a conviction that there was danger there. He knew in his mind
what to do in the emergency, but very properly he felt that he must call
the captain out at once.
He crossed the deck in one bound.
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