The lad got aft to look at the compass. Yes, her head was north and a trifle westerly. She was boldly holding her course at all events.
It was very dark indeed, for all round the vessel the horizon was close on board of her, and the inky clouds must have been miles deep. The ship's masts seemed to cut through them when high on the top of a storm-tormented wave, and when down in the deep trough between two seas these waves thundered over the bows and came rushing aft in white foam, a rolling cataract, which, had the ship not been battened down, would have flooded the engine-room and probably drowned out the fires.
Creggan was perfectly alive to the extreme danger, for if the ship from any accident broached to, in all probability she would turn turtle and be heard of nevermore, until the sea gave up its dead.
Yet Creggan managed to get forward a few yards to the spot where the first lieutenant stood clinging to a stay, and they managed to carry on a conversation for a while.
But a kind of drowsiness stole over both, and presently they became silent.
Creggan was awakened from his lethargy by the crashing of wood forward. A mighty wave had splintered the bulwarks, and for just about half a minute the vessel fell off her course.
It was found necessary to put an extra hand to the wheel.
The storm was now at its worst. Ever and anon the waves, more than houses high, made a clean breach over her, the spray dashing as high as the fore-top, and even down the funnel.
To add to the terror, peal after peal of thunder appeared to shake the ship to her very keel. Louder far than the roar of the savage waves was this thunder, and the lightning lit up the slippery decks, and showed the men crouching and shivering aft, their faces like the faces of the dead, while over the ocean it shot and glimmered till the sea itself looked an ocean of fire.
Indeed, indeed a dreadful night!