The other steamer, groping to nose a clear path through the hazards of these waters, steadily became more clamorous.
The Wasdale called with loud, imploring blasts as if asking the stranger to speak more distinctly. The chief officer said as he glanced at the helm indicator:
"She's barely got steerage way now, sir."
"Let her go as she is for a liddle bit," replied the captain. "Dot feller is going up channel, I t'ink. But vat he do heading our way in such a devil of a hurry?" For a deadened hoot told that the unknown was drawing close aboard. The straining eyes on the Wasdale's bridge could see not more than two ship-lengths into the midnight fog.
"It is like dot game they play in the steerage," was the captain's whispered comment. "Two fellers is blindfold, and the udder sundowners make 'em chase one anudder round the deck."
The warnings from beyond had assumed definite direction, as if the stranger were guided by a fell instinct beyond the ken of her own officers. The Wasdale's siren ripped the night with quavering exhortation to hold hard and beware.
Suddenly the captain gripped the bridge rail and lifted himself on his toes with a smothered "Gott!" that was wrenched from the depths of his broad chest. Two lights blinked, red and green, almost abeam, and between them a towering mass dead black against the shrouding night, while amazed voices were heard screaming a flurry of orders from the fog, even before the roar of both whistles sounded a belated duet.
Captain Arendt was at his indicator with a leap and was like to pull the handle from its sockets as he signaled to reverse his engines, while his chief officer was shouting down the tube the same momentous summons. The third officer was softly treading a little jig-step, in a frenzy of impatience to have the thing done without more suspense. The Wasdale groaned and trembled to the furious reaction of her screw, lost headway, hung helpless, and showed a fair broadside to the assault of the other ship, which, wholly at fault, had begun to swing in fatal blundering, as if trying to pass under the Wasdale's stern.
The blow came, therefore, a little abaft the bridge. Succeeding a prodigious crash and rending of plates came a moment of impressive stillness, as the Wasdale tried to right herself from the shock, and then a foolish clatter of falling china and glass.
"He's waltzed clean through our pantry," said the third officer to himself.