It was only when actually passing the stern within easy hail of the
_Ferndale_, that her headlong speed became apparent to the eye. With the
red light shut off and soaring like an immense shadow on the crest of a
wave she was lost to view in one great, forward swing, melting into the
lightless space.
"Close shave," said Captain Anthony in an indifferent voice just raised
enough to be heard in the wind. "A blind lot on board that ship. Put
out the flare now."
Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can,
bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon
the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision
of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white
churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying
upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two
destroyed ships. It vanished and there was an immense relief. He told
me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very
thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over.
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