“Be quiet,” I said, sternly.

He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gesture of his despair.  “What are we doing here?”

“Looking for the land wind.”

He made as if to tear his hair, and addressed me recklessly.

“She will never get out.  You have done it, sir.  I knew it’d end in something like this.  She will never weather, and you are too close now to stay.  She’ll drift ashore before she’s round.  O my God!”

I caught his arm as he was raising it to batter his poor devoted head, and shook it violently.

“She’s ashore already,” he wailed, trying to tear himself away.

“Is she? . . .  Keep good full there!”

“Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman in a frightened, thin, childlike voice.

I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shaking it.  “Ready about, do you hear?  You go forward”—­shake—­“and stop there”—­shake—­“and hold your noise”—­shake—­“and see these head-sheets properly overhauled”—­shake, shake—­shake.

And all the time I dared not look towards the land lest my heart should fail me.  I released my grip at last and he ran forward as if fleeing for dear life.

I wondered what my double there in the sail locker thought of this commotion.  He was able to hear everything—­and perhaps he was able to understand why, on my conscience, it had to be thus close—­no less.  My first order “Hard alee!” re-echoed ominously under the towering shadow of Koh-ring as if I had shouted in a mountain gorge.  And then I watched the land intently.  In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming-to.  No!  I could not feel her.  And my second self was making now ready to ship out and lower himself overboard.  Perhaps he was gone already . . . ?

The great black mass brooding over our very mastheads began to pivot away from the ship’s side silently.  And now I forgot the secret stranger ready to depart, and remembered only that I was a total stranger to the ship.  I did not know her.  Would she do it?  How was she to be handled?

I swung the mainyard and waited helplessly.  She was perhaps stopped, and her very fate hung in the balance, with the black mass of Koh-ring like the gate of the everlasting night towering over her taffrail.  What would she do now?  Had she way on her yet?  I stepped to the side swiftly, and on the shadowy water I could see nothing except a faint phosphorescent flash revealing the glassy smoothness of the sleeping surface.  It was impossible to tell—­and I had not learned yet the feel of my ship.  Was she moving?  What I needed was something easily seen, a piece of paper, which I could throw overboard and watch.  I had nothing on me.  To run down for it I didn’t dare.  There was no time.  All at once my strained, yearning stare distinguished a white object floating within a yard of the ship’s side.  White on the black water.  A phosphorescent flash passed under it.  What was that thing? .