But though we were unable to forereach upon our big neighbour, it became evident, as the morning now wore on, that the two craft were very gradually nearing each other, the extraordinary weatherly qualities of the Esmeralda coming conspicuously into notice in this thrash to windward on a taut bowline, now that we had the opportunity of comparing them with those of another vessel. At noon the stranger showed her colours, British, and, upon our responding, exhibited her number; from which and other signals we learned that she was the Northern Queen, of Glasgow, bound to Cape Town. Then followed an exchange of latitude and longitude, ours and hers agreeing within a mile or two; and before the signal flags were finally hauled down and stowed away we had accomplished quite a long conversation, to the intense delight of my passengers, especially the fairer members, to whom this sort of thing was still quite a novelty.
Thus the day wore on, the bright and pleasant hours being whiled away in a friendly trial of speed that, though we guessed it not, was hurrying our companion onward to a strange, sudden, and awful doom.
At length the sun went down in a bewildering blaze of gold and crimson and purple splendour; and almost simultaneously the full-orbed moon rose majestically above the eastern horizon, flooding the sea that way with liquid silver, and showing our friend, the Northern Queen, hull up in the very heart of the dazzle, the entire fabric, hull, spars, and canvas, standing out black as an ebony silhouette against the soft blue-grey and ivory of the cloud-dappled sky. She was at this time square upon our weather-beam; but with the rising of the moon the breeze acquired new life, as it often does, and came down upon us with a weight sufficient to render it advisable to clew up and furl our royals—which we did; the Northern Queen continuing to carry hers, as of course she could, being a much bigger craft than ourselves, and fitted with much stouter spars. She was thus enabled to draw gradually ahead of us, much to the chagrin of our worthy chief mate, who asserted, with quite unnecessary vehemence, that it was absolutely the first time that the Esmeralda had ever been beaten by anything in moderate weather. It thus came to pass that at midnight our companion was dead to windward of us, and about seven miles distant.
My lady passengers had retired to their berths about an hour before; but Sir Edgar, tempted by the beauty and cool freshness of the night, lingered on deck, and—both of us being shod with rubber-soled shoes in order that we might not disturb the repose of the sleepers below—was pacing the weather side of the poop with me, and relating some of his former adventures as a traveller, before he had settled down as a sober, steady, respectable Benedict—as he laughingly put it. Suddenly, as we turned in our walk, within arm’s length of the binnacle, we became conscious of a vivid increase of light, and at the same moment an indescribable, deep, hurtling roar smote upon our ears above the startled cry of the helmsman, the loud hum of the wind in our rigging, and the sobbing wash of the sea. The sound and the light so obviously came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, and equipment, was as brilliantly illuminated as at noonday. It was passing, at no very great apparent speed, immediately over our mastheads, in a south-easterly direction, leaving a long trail of evanescent sparks behind it, and as we watched we could see that it was falling toward the sea.
“God of mercy—the ship, the ship!” gasped Sir Edgar, clutching my arm in a grip that left its mark on the skin for days afterward; and, as he spoke, the huge incandescent mass fell full upon the hull of the Northern Queen. There was a flash like that of a bursting shell on board her, and ere we could draw a breath the stately fabric of her spars and sails collapsed and vanished into the deep before our eyes!
For some seconds we were all, fore and aft, so paralysed with horror and dismay that not a sound escaped our lips. Even the weird night music of the wind and sea appeared to be hushed for the moment, or our startled senses failed to note it, and presently there came floating down to us upon the pinions of the breeze a muffled, booming crash, as confirmatory evidence of the appalling disaster.
“Gone—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!” ejaculated Sir Edgar, with quivering, ashen lips, as he strained his eyes toward the point so recently occupied by our companion. “Oh, captain, can nothing be done? Is there no hope that out there some few survivors at least may be floating on a scrap or two of wreckage? You will go there and see, will you not?”
“Assuredly I will,” said I. “I will tack the moment that I think we can fetch the spot where the ship disappeared. Meanwhile,” continued I, to the second mate, who had charge of the deck, “get up three rockets and fire them, as a signal to the possible survivors that we have observed the disaster, and intend to look for them. They will, no doubt, understand what we mean.”
The rockets were brought on deck and fired; by which time I judged that we had gone far enough to justify us in tacking ship. We accordingly went about, and two hands were then stationed on the fore-topsail yard to keep a lookout for wreckage, while a third laid out as far as the flying-jib-boom end for the same purpose.
We had been on the starboard tack some three-quarters of an hour, and I had just hailed the lookouts, warning them to be especially vigilant, as we must now be near the scene of the catastrophe, when the man on the flying-jib-boom end cried out with startling suddenness—