'Lights—lights alongside—where is she?—what is it, in the name of God?' cried twenty voices, as a dreadful crash, followed by the sound of splintering wood, was heard.
'All hands shorten sail!' cried Tom Llanyard; 'man the fore clew garnets—stand by the top-gallant clew-lines—stand by the peak and throat halyards—down with the jib—lift tacks and sheets—let go and belay—look to the main gaff, and get out lights for God's sake!'
Tom's rapid orders were skilfully and speedily obeyed, and in a very few minutes the sails were reduced and nearly furled, while the cold night wind swept through the open rigging, and the Firefly rose and fell on the long rollers, with a terrible jarring and rasping sound, as she was evidently foul of some vessel, but had not suffered apparently, according to the carpenter's first report on the state of the pumps.
She lay-to with only canvas enough on her for steering purposes.
A great flame now glared upward right under her bows, as the wavering and streaming blaze from a flare-tin showed that she was foul of a great Belgian fishing smack, of a tonnage equal to her own—her deck to all appearance full of men, shrieking and gesticulating as only Frenchmen or Belgians gesticulate and shriek, inspired by terror, their pallid and excited faces, half seen in light, half hidden in shadow, against the surrounding blackness, as the red glare from, the upheld flare-tin fell on them, and on the head or berthing boards of the lugger, which bore her name—Le Chien Noir d'Ostende—The Black Hound of Ostend! The Black Hound! Was there a fatality in this?
Alison was sick with affright; her father looked grimly, sternly, and pitifully on; but my Lord Cadbury's teeth (or what remained of them) were clattering in his jaws like castanets.
'This is no fault of ours, my lord,' said Tom, 'we had our top-light, as you see; these lubbers had none.'
As he spoke the red light from the flare-tin shed one more than usually powerful glare of radiance on the crowd of appalled visages that lined the hull and filled the rigging of the broken and battered lugger, and then expired, leaving all in the blackness of night again.
Every lantern in the Firefly was now brought on deck and bent on to ropes, the boats were cleared away for hoisting out, fenders were hung over the side, and life-buoys and belts cut away. Again came the crashing, rasping sound, as the hull of the lugger, which was evidently stove in, swerved alongside the yacht, across the deck of which her mainmast fell with a crash, bringing down the fore-topmast of the former with all its top hamper, making her for the time also a helpless wreck.
A block swinging at the end of a rope struck Sir Ranald Cheyne and hurled him on the deck. Alison bent over him in despair and terror indescribable and unutterable, feeling scarcely able to restrain the conviction that all this was really happening to herself.