That question was answered even as he asked it by the revelation of a ship. It had the suddenness of a magic-lantern picture flung swiftly. They saw at the range of a pistol a lurid shape, which they easily distinguished as a barque with painted ports, a tall poop, and a tall topgallant forecastle. She was burning flares upon her main-deck and waist, and the red flames, winding tongues of fire into feathers of soot-black smoke, jewelled the whole apparition with red-hot stars. They pierced through the fog like sunlit rubies from glass and brass, from wet plank and mast, and the grease of spars. She was so close that she shone out clearly, and made light enough for the people of the York to see by. Her helm was hard up and she was slowly paying off, but her flying-jib boom must catch the mizzen-rigging of the Australian clipper. You heard the splintering of wood aloft, the crash of nearer timber, broken off carrot-like betwixt a lazy roll of both ships.
The barque's decks were a sight for the gods. Figures of men could be seen rushing frantically here and there. They were all shouting; men on the poop were screeching orders, and nothing but the helm gave heed; men on the forecastle were roaring and flourishing their fists. The flames duplicated the shadows of the running figures; painted lines of the rigging upon the planks writhed between the water-ways, like serpents snaking their attenuated lengths overboard. Never did any sea light flash up a more startling, a wilder, a more ghastly tapestry. 'Twas like a painting in flames and ruddy stars upon the black canvas of the fog, and the hull, with its lines of ports like the keys of a piano, reeled slowly off on the lift of the brine, yard-arm to yard-arm, the beating canvas of each red as the powder flag, and dying out up aloft like the reflection of a burning ship upon a cloud.
It was all too breathless for action aboard the York. Before a brace could be let go, before an order could be yelled, the stranger's flying-jib boom was crackling and gone, and her topgallantmast, with its canvas, was plastering the topsail; and then it was almost channel to channel, and the barque's poop was abreast of the York's quarter-deck.
"Great God!" cried Hardy.
A figure standing near the stranger's mizzen-rigging fell, and another figure fled aft, but at that instant some back draught of breeze thickened the crystals of the fog smoking close to the stranger's taffrail with a dense feathering of the black stench from the flares; the burning picture vanished out astern, as though to the fall of a curtain of midnight hue, the sounds of shouting sank, and in the hush that fell upon the York's deck, nothing was to be heard but the dreary lamentations of broken water under the bows, and the weeping noise of eddies under the counter.
"A close shave!" said Captain Layard, fetching a deep breath. "She has not hurt us, I think."
"I saw a man fall as if stabbed," said Hardy.
"Back the topsail! I'll keep the ship hove to till we can see," exclaimed the captain, whose attention, concentrated by the sudden blackness into which the ship had floated, was wholly in the manœuvre he had commanded.
The order was sung out, the sailors came groping their way aft to the main-braces, the yards were swung, and the ship was brought to a stand, lightly rolling her masts with a slap of hidden pinion, which made you think of some gigantic navy signal-man waving flags.