She shot a quick glance at Sinclair. He did not seem to be paying attention to what they were saying. But a quizzical smile playing about his eyes and mouth betrayed his interest in the conversation and his remembrance of what had taken place the evening before.
"Indeed, Dr. MacKay, I am not a good sailor at all. I have been sea-sick when there was only a little chop on the water. I was sea-sick yesterday. I should have been sick to-day, only this storm is so interesting that I have not had time to think about myself. When the officers and crew are being tossed about the deck by the waves, like dead leaves on a burn in autumn, it is really too interesting and amusing to be missed."
The rare smile lighted up the missionary's face as he glanced at Sinclair. The latter accepted the challenge, and a quick answer was on his tongue, when McLeod hurried past. He paused long enough to say to Sinclair:
"We're opposite the harbour, doctor, but we can't make it." Then he ran up on the bridge to join Captain Whiteley, who had not left it since midnight.
The words were intended for Sinclair alone. But a momentary lull in the storm made them louder than McLeod anticipated. Sinclair's two companions heard them. Yet neither showed any trace of concern—neither the mature man who had faced death scores of times on sea and on land, nor the young woman who had never knowingly been in danger before.
The same brief lull in the force of the wind brought an equally momentary gleam of light through the darkness, which had up till then made noonday as gloomy as a late twilight. That gleam lighted for a few short seconds the landscape, and showed the storm-tossed company where they were. There directly ahead was the harbour of Tamsui, with the green and purple hills beyond. There on the nearest hill-top was the Red Fort which for two and a half centuries had braved such storms as this. Just beyond it were the low white bungalows of the mission, nearly hidden in the trees, where anxious eyes were watching for one who was on that battling ship. There, too, were the black balls hanging on the yard-arm at the signal station, saying that the tide was falling and the bar impassable. And the two white beacons for a single instant in line, and then widening apart, told the seamen that not only the tempest but the ebb tide, sweeping past the mouth of the harbour, was bearing them full upon the long curving beach of sand and shells which lay just to the north, where the surf was beating so furiously.
It takes time to tell. But in reality the respite lasted only a few seconds. Then the typhoon burst upon them again, with apparently redoubled violence. The darkness and the tumult of wind and waves were appalling.
"I wonder that you are not afraid," said Sinclair to Miss MacAllister, losing sight of their passages at arms in the seriousness of the situation.
"Should I be afraid?" was her reply.
"Most people would be."