"Merciful Mary!" Pete Jackson gasped incoherently. "We're done for now, Capt'n!"
Douglas ran a dazed hand over his sweat-ridden eyes, opening them wider. Then, even as he watched, the black shape began to turn slowly, falling back from the hurtling Lucifer. Only then could he see it fully. A cry of astonishment broke from the skipper as he recognized the thing for what it was. This Witch of the Pass was the gaunt and charred corpse of an ether-blaster, whose orbit lay round and round inside the Straits that had destroyed it. Like a mute, accusing ghost, the old ship was forever destined to haunt the narrow scene of its murder.
No wonder that for an instant he had half-believed the Straits bewitched! The sight outside wasn't very pleasant. Nor was it comforting to think that the Lucifer might yet join that lonely vigil. Captain Douglas turned from the plate and choked an angry oath back at the searing heat around him.
"Get Skelly," he snapped to Jackson; but the mate was clearly in no condition to obey. Pete Jackson still stood like a man who has looked into the inferno and is only awaiting the summons of a ghastly tap on the shoulder. Douglas scowled, blinked the sweat from his eyes, and started to exit himself. It didn't seem to make much difference, but he couldn't let the bo'sun perish like a caged rat.
However, he didn't leave the bridge. Something on the instrument panel gave Captain Douglas the sudden hope that he might be able to let Skelly stay where he was. The tempo-needle had halted its upward swing. The tiny arrow hovered motionless a hair's breadth from the hull melting-point; but it did not advance. As he watched it, the needle began to retreat, imperceptibly at first; then faster. Douglas jumped incredulously to the forward plate.
The twilighted expanse before the Lucifer was wide, frosty and marvelously clear. The mists had disappeared. They were through! The Captain's call brought mate Jackson up from his seat and all the way across the bridge in two jumps.
"Praise be!" Pete Jackson blinked joyfully into the sight. "It's a miracle—that's what it is!"
"A miracle, my big toe!" was Captain Douglas's very unskipperish retort. A thought which might explain the Lucifer's narrow escape from the fate of the charred ether-blaster, was forming in the skipper's mind. It was a thought which gained credence when Douglas quickly tested the contents of a vial in the bridge. The glass receptacle was filled with a sampling of the misty vapor in the Straits.
"Look at this," Douglas called the mate to him. Jackson peered at the results of the test, incredulously at first; then with an abject expression as he realized what it meant. Captain Douglas's further explanation did not make the little mate feel any happier.
"I just don't know what happened to me," Pete Jackson shook his head. "First those infernal shrieks and then that old oxy-burner back there—" The mate broke off with a woeful, contrite look.