“It is impossible to see a yard ahead,” he confided to his second in command.  “I have never been so anxious before in my life.  Thank God the night is drawing to a close.  Perhaps, when day breaks——­”

His last words contained a prayer and a hope.  Even as he spoke the ship seemed to lift herself bodily with an unusual effort for a vessel moving before the wind.

The next instant there was a horrible grinding crash forward.  Each person who did not chance to be holding fast to an upright was thrown violently down.  The deck was tilted to a dangerous angle and remained there, whilst the heavy buffeting of the sea, now raging afresh at this unlooked-for resistance, drowned the despairing yells raised by the Lascars on duty.

The Sirdar had completed her last voyage.  She was now a battered wreck on a barrier reef.  She hung thus for one heart-breaking second.  Then another wave, riding triumphantly through its fellows, caught the great steamer in its tremendous grasp, carried her onward for half her length and smashed her down on the rocks.  Her back was broken.  She parted in two halves.  Both sections turned completely over in the utter wantonness of destruction, and everything—­masts, funnels, boats, hull, with every living soul on board—­was at once engulfed in a maelstrom of rushing water and far-flung spray.

CHAPTER II

THE SURVIVORS

When the Sirdar parted amidships, the floor of the saloon heaved up in the center with a mighty crash of rending woodwork and iron.  Men and women, too stupefied to sob out a prayer, were pitched headlong into chaos.  Iris, torn from the terrified grasp of her maid, fell through a corridor, and would have gone down with the ship had not a sailor, clinging to a companion ladder, caught her as she whirled along the steep slope of the deck.

He did not know what had happened.  With the instinct of self-preservation he seized the nearest support when the vessel struck.  It was the mere impulse of ready helpfulness that caused him to stretch out his left arm and clasp the girl’s waist as she fluttered past.  By idle chance they were on the port side, and the ship, after pausing for one awful second, fell over to starboard.

The man was not prepared for this second gyration.  Even as the stairway canted he lost his balance; they were both thrown violently through the open hatchway, and swept off into the boiling surf.  Under such conditions thought itself was impossible.  A series of impressions, a number of fantastic pictures, were received by the benumbed faculties, and afterwards painfully sorted out by the memory.  Fear, anguish, amazement—­none of these could exist.  All he knew was that the lifeless form of a woman—­for Iris had happily fainted—­must be held until death itself wrenched her from him.  Then there came the headlong plunge into the swirling sea, followed by an indefinite period of gasping oblivion.  Something that felt like a moving rock rose up beneath his feet.  He was driven clear out of the water and seemed to recognize a familiar object rising rigid and bright close at hand.  It was the binnacle pillar, screwed to a portion of the deck which came away from the charthouse and was rent from the upper framework by contact with the reef.