Drake glanced apprehensively behind him, and there, sure enough, just below the inky curtain of blackness on the northern horizon, which was now being rent in every direction by continuous lightning flashes, could be seen a long line of whitish colour, which, there could be no doubt, was approaching the ship with more than the speed of an express train.
Frobisher had scarcely uttered the words before the darkness was rent by the most terrifically vivid flash of lightning that he had ever seen, while simultaneously the air was shattered by a clap of thunder of such frightful volume that the cruiser jarred and shivered from stem to stern, as though she had taken the ground at full speed; indeed, for some seconds Frobisher was not at all sure that they had not happened upon some uncharted shoal. And while all hands were still cringing involuntarily from the shock, there came another dazzling flash of lightning, apparently within a few yards of the vessel, followed immediately by peal on peal of thunder, which rolled and reverberated over the sea as though all the great guns in existence were being fired at the same time within a few miles of them.
Then the rain came down as it only can in those latitudes—as though the bottom of an enormous tank had been suddenly knocked out; the roar of that colossal volume of water beating on the deck being such that, although Frobisher put his mouth to Drake’s ear and shouted with all the power of his lungs, the latter could not distinguish a syllable.
For only a few brief seconds did this last; then it ceased as suddenly as though a tap had been turned off. An instant later the line of white water appeared, scarcely a hundred yards distant from the Chih’ Yuen’s stern. Frobisher had barely time to yell an order to the men on deck to “hold on for their lives” before the oncoming wave and the attendant hurricane broke upon the cruiser.
The wave, black, gleaming, and sinister in the sheen of the lancing lightning flashes, and capped with a ridge of phosphorescent foam, swept over the cruiser’s stern, down upon the quarter-deck, and then forward, burying the ship in an instant from stern to stem, so that her captain, up on the navigating bridge, was unable for a few seconds to see anything of his vessel’s decks, the bridge on which he and Drake were standing—or endeavouring to stand—and the tops of the ventilators being all of the upper-works that showed above the racing turmoil of foam-covered water. At the same time Frobisher and Drake were literally jammed against the quivering rails of the bridge and held there, powerless to move, by the amazing force of the wind.
A perceptible quiver thrilled through the hull of the sturdy vessel as, like a live thing, she endeavoured to free herself from that enormous weight of water, and a few moments later she emerged from the swirl, which poured off her decks in cataracts. Then, rolling herself free of the rest of her burden, she was carried irresistibly forward on the back of the wave, like a chip in the current of a mill-race.
Frobisher gave a big sigh of relief as he saw his ship shake herself free. “A little longer, Drake, and she would have foundered under our feet,” he managed to gasp; “if she had not been the sturdy craft that she is, she would not have come up again.”
“You’re right, sir,” replied Drake, wiping the spray out of his eyes; “that was a narrow squeak, if ever there was one. But hark to the wind! It must be blowing at ninety miles an hour, at least. I pray that nothing may get in our way, for we could not possibly avoid it. A hair’s-breadth out of our course, and the ship would broach to and capsize with us.”
Drake spoke truth. Although the sea was absolutely smooth—every wave-crest being shorn off by the terrific force of the wind almost before it had time to form—the extremely heavy swell that had arisen earlier in the evening was still running. Even the hurricane could not flatten that, and the Chih’ Yuen, driven forward by her own steam and the power of the wind behind her, rushed down one steep slope and up the next with a speed that made even the most experienced seaman gasp. A very slight alteration of the helm, at the speed at which the ship was then travelling, would certainly suffice to send her reeling over upon her beam-ends, aided by the “send” of the sea.
Looking round him, after the storm’s first wild outburst, Frobisher was horrified to observe the terrible damage and loss of life that had been caused by that first great rush of water. Of the men who had been on deck at the time, only some half a dozen poor, draggled, half-drowned creatures, clinging limply to the nearest support, could be seen; while every movable object had been swept overboard into the sea, as well as a number that are not usually considered easy of removal. Several ventilators had been shorn off level with the deck, and the water had poured in tons down the openings thus formed; the two quarterboats had disappeared altogether, and of another boat only the stem and stern posts remained, hanging to the davit tackles by their ring-bolts. Stanchions were either missing altogether, or bent into a variety of curious and extraordinary shapes; and even some of the lighter machine-guns mounted on deck had been torn from their tripods, and were by this time at the bottom of the sea. The havoc was simply indescribable, and Frobisher’s heart was full of bitterness as he surveyed the shocking wreck of what had, a few minutes previously, been the smartest and finest cruiser in the whole Chinese Navy, and thought of the poor souls who were perhaps, even now, struggling feebly as they gradually sank to their watery graves.