Then came the second explosion, and five minutes later the third, and from her a great flame which continued to burn.

“Captain Blaise, I don’t understand.  Why that fire-raft?” Miss Shiela had reappeared on deck.

“Why?  We are hoping that they will think that we are sailing out to sea in line of the explosions, just the opposite from what we are doing.  If they will but think that that burning raft is our burning hold and that we are in distress, why—­Look, Miss Shiela!”

Two war-ships were now signalling to each other recklessly, and their signals gave us a chance to reckon pretty nearly the course that they were steering.  Both ships were headed straight for the burning raft.  As they came on they uncovered their sailing lights, to prevent collision with each other, and watching these two ships’ lights we might have picked a way directly between them.  But if they happened to have another ship under cover in that apparently open water, we would be lost; and also, in passing between, we would have blocked off the lights of each in turn to the other and then they would have us.

Between the bar and the sailing lights of the inshore ship of the pair now bearing down, we knew there was another ship.  We had seen her signal early, and that ship, we knew, would be held as close to the line of surf as her draught and the nerve of her commander would allow.  Captain Blaise, reckoning where she should be, laid the Bess’s course for her.  “She’s used to having a little loose water on her deck—­let her have it again,” he said, and at this time we had everything on her, and if I have not made any talk of it before, I’ll say it now—­the Bess could sail.

We were now heading about a point off the edge of the outer line of heavy breakers, and as the Bess had the least free-board of any ship of her size sailing the trades, she was soon carrying on her deck her full allowance of loose water.  Amidships, when she lay quietly to anchor, a long-armed man could lean over her rail and all but touch his fingers in the sea.  Now, with the wind beam, over her lee rail amidships the heavy seas mounted.  On the high quarter-deck we had only to hang onto the weather-rail, but the men stationed amidships had to watch sharp to keep from being swept overboard.

She was long and lean.  It was her depth, and not her beam, which had held the Bess from capsizing in many a blow.  Ten years Captain Blaise had had her, and in those ten years, whether in sport or need, he had not spared her.  She was long and lean, and as loose forward as an old market basket.

Loose and lean and low, she was wiggling like a black snake through the white-topped seas.  We had men in our foretop looking for the guard-ship, and because they knew almost exactly where to look for her, we saw her in time and swung the Bess inside her, yet closer to the breakers.  Her big bulk piled toward us, her great sails reached up in clouds—­shadows of clouds.  Past our bow, past our waist, past our quarter.  We could pick the painted ports and the protruding black muzzles of her port battery as she passed, a huge shapeless shadow racing one way, and we going the other way like some long, sinuous, black devil of a creature streaking through a white-bedded darkness.