All had been done that human ingenuity could suggest. Everything movable on deck had been made fast, and the engines were going at top power to force the ship through the storm. Tom could see dark figures clustered about the lifeboats, and he knew the sailors stood ready to lower them in case of necessity.
“But I think I’d rather take my chance on the Silver Star than in a small boat in such a sea,” reflected Tom, not without a shudder, as he looked at the heaving billows.
He could not tell whether it was raining or not, as the spray was like a fall of the drops from the clouds. There was no thunder or lightning—just a hard, steady blow.
On staggered the steamer. Tom braced himself in a corner by a deckhouse, and held on. He could look over the rail at the hissing seas that ran alongside.
Suddenly there came a hoarse cry from the lookout in the bows.
“Port! Port your wheel!” he screamed. “We’ll be upon it in a second. Port!”
“Port it is!” came the quick voice of Captain Steerit.
A moment later there came a staggering blow in the dark—a blow that seemed to halt the Silver Star in her career—a blow that made the craft shiver from stem to stern!