I stood at the stern, looking out over the wake—which glowed dully with swirling phos­phor­escence—for a long time. Then I wandered forward, and stood under the fore rigging, on the weather side. The wind was fresh, and I heard the noise the Clearchus made going through the water, with an occasional muffled cluck of a block, the regular slatting of some slack rope against a sail, or perhaps the reef points. I looked along the deck, or where the deck ought to be, and I could see nothing. I felt as I used to feel on the infrequent occasions when my mother had shut me in a closet, except that there was no paroxysm of temper to make me forget the darkness, and that there was a feeling of utter loneliness, as though I were perched on nothing, all alone in the midst of a sea of blackness. I became almost afraid to move my feet for fear that there would be nothing under them. When Peter and the Prince spoke to me gently, at my shoulder, I very nearly cried out.

If I had not heard the Prince I should not have known he was there. I could see no sign of him. Peter’s face was but a dim blur, and nothing of his body was visible. Your true whaleman does not go about his business clad in a natty white duck suit, like a navy sailorman, and with a teacup of a white hat perched upon his head; but he wears old civilian clothes, which look—by daylight—as though they had been boiled in oil, and then, while still wet with it, had been dragged through all the dust of the wharves. Such clothes make him practically invisible on an ordinarily dark night.

In a very low voice that was scarcely more than a whisper, Peter remarked that it was a black night. I agreed with him enthus­iast­i­cally, and the Prince grunted his assent. We stood there by the fore rigging for some time in silence. None of us seemed to feel like talking, or to know what to say.

“You can hardly see the fo’c’s’le lamp,” Peter observed at last. “It looks as if it was in a thick cloud of smoke. It won’t burn bright, whatever we do to it, and there ’s some that say there ’s a sort of halo around the flame, like the halos they put around the heads of their saints—like a sort of sun-dog. It may be so, though I did n’t see it. Something ’s going to happen, I ’m thinking. I never saw a darker night.”

I tried to reply lightly, but I could not, and did not reply at all. The Prince said nothing, and in a few minutes they had faded away into the darkness. I went back to the stern, and stood there for a long time, peering out, but seeing nothing. The silent man at the wheel was some comfort, and once in a while Mr. Tilton, who had that watch, looked in. There was the faint bubbling of the wake, and the same noises as before, but largely cut off by the roof of the house. I had glanced at the compass, which was swung just inside the cabin skylight instead of in a binnacle, and had seen that we were heading due north. That was not sailing very close, but the Clearchus really made more if she was not held too close to the wind. I was getting drowsy in spite of my uneasiness, and was just making up my mind to turn in. In fact I had taken my elbows from the taffrail, on which I had been leaning, and raised my eyes.

Suddenly, without my being conscious of it, there broke from my throat a yell that would have waked the dead; and there loomed out of the blackness, just at our stern, the flying jibboom of a ship. It was high over my head, and I could just dimly make out jibs rising from it which seemed to reach to the heavens. I had no time to think, but I know I had the impression that our stern was sure to be cut off, and I yelled again. If I had taken time to think I should have realized that that other ship was bound for the Strait, as we were, but sailing a couple of points closer; and that, even if she was going three knots to our one, our chances of escape were good. Hindsight is easy; and when I saw the end of the spritsail yard and some stays within reach of my hand I grabbed them—probably the flying-jib guys—and hauled myself up and landed in her nettings. I was still there when the two vessels came together. The yards of the ship I was on were braced well around, or the damage would have been greater. As it was, the Clearchus had her spanker carried away, and a spare boat brushed off the roof of her after house, and she was given a gentle push on her course. Then she vanished quickly into the night.

The strange ship had apparently put her helm down as soon as it was known that there was danger of a collision, but was just beginning to feel it. A big ship—this ship turned out to be about twice the size of the Clearchus—a big ship like that does not mind her helm instantly, and she had come up perhaps half a point or less when the moment had passed, and the helm was put up again, bringing her back to her course. I do not believe she would have come up much more in any case, for a moment later showed me that she had every­thing set, even to studding-sails on the weather side; and having all those sails taken suddenly aback in the breeze that was blowing might have resulted in greater damage—to her, at least—than an actual collision.

I say that a moment later I saw that she had every­thing set. I was just getting to my feet to feel my way aft, when there was a blinding glare of lightning which illuminated the sea for miles around. It was brighter than day; and the picture of the Clearchus, pegging along on our lee quarter, as though nothing had happened, and of the cloud of sail carried by the ship which carried me, was etched upon my mind with a precision and permanence which permitted examination at my leisure. I found that the Clearchus was unhurt; men at work taking in her spanker, and brailing it, the gaff broken. A spare boat gone, and some splintered woodwork on the starboard corner of the after house were the only evidences.

No burst of rain followed that single flash of lightning, but a crash of thunder, and the giants seemed to be bowling over my head. Then, after a little, threads of lightning began to chase each other over the sky, and soon the sky was covered with an interlacing network, the lines moving incessantly, accompanied by a continuous crackling, like the cracklings in a gigantic frying-pan. The wind had dropped almost instantly, and we lay there, rolling gently in the swell, and flapping that enormous spread of canvas in a flat calm.

It was light enough to see easily where I was going, and I made my way inboard, where I was met by the lookout. He sent me aft to see the officer of the watch, who questioned me briefly. I wanted him to send me aboard the Clearchus at once, but he refused, saying that the breeze might start up again at any moment, and that, with all that spread of sail, they would inevitably leave their boat behind; and that he would not call all hands to reduce sail for anybody. He said that I had come on his ship of my own accord, and if I did not like it I could leave. He would not keep me from going; or a boat could be sent for me from my own ship without much trouble. That was true. I wondered why they did not send for me, for I thought that the man at the wheel had seen me go; but I found out afterward that the man at the wheel had been so completely taken up with other things that he had not noticed my departure, and they had not yet found that I was missing.