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sailing.
    Next moment he stumbled into the Third Officer who was superintending the swinging out of the port boat and the party scheduled to go off in it.
    Most of the boat’s complement was already aboard. In the coloured light which flickered momentarily from the falling stars of another rocket, turning white faces to a ghastly hue, De Brissac glimpsed Unity Carden sitting bolt upright in the stern, next to her father.
    Synolda Ortello was between old Colonel Carden and Basil Sutherland. Her fair hair, caught in the violent wind, was whipping about in wild disorder; her blue eyes were wide and terrified. Some of her eyelash black had run where she had tried to wipe the flying spray from her chalk-white face. Vicente Vedras had attempted to force his way into the boat with her, but as he was listed for the port boat for’ard, which was taking off the Portuguese-speaking passengers, the Third Officer had refused to allow him to board.
    As De Brissac came staggering into them the Venezuelan was still pleading with the Swede to be allowed to join the young widow for whom he had developed such a desperate passion.
    ‘Wait!’ shouted the officer. ‘I must check my crew—if there’s room I’ll take you.’
    Juhani Luvia was standing in the bow of the boat. He and the young Third Officer yelled at each other, cupping their hands about their mouths like megaphones to make themselves heard above the screaming of the straining timbers and constant hiss of rushing water.
    It was found that three sailors were missing from their posts. One was a Quartermaster who had been carried overboard earlier in the day; another lay dead in the fo’c’sle, killed an hour before by the snapping of a wire rope under tremendous strain which had flown back with such force that it had nearly severed his head from his body; the third was a young apprentice who had just disappeared—no one knew where.
    The officer swung round on the Venezuelan. ‘All right—up you go!’
    The siren blared incessantly; shouts and curses sounded faintly above the howling storm.
    A lurch of the ship sent De Brissac reeling a dozen paces forward, so that he came just opposite the bow of the boat; it was above him, but only a few feet beyond the ship’s rail where he brought up. Peering down on to the deck, Luvia recognised him, and, leaning out, yelled at the top of his voice: ‘Why the hell aren’t you in your boat, man?’
    ‘Boat’s gone!’ De Brissac roared back. ‘I’d thought of waiting till she goes under and floating off on one of the rafts.’
    ‘You’re nuts!’
    ‘I’m not—the other boat was smashed to bits against the ship—everyone drowned. I doubt if you’ll be any luckier.’
    ‘We’re better off here—the list to port’ll help us drop clear—no alternative worth trying.’
    ‘You’re full up, aren’t you?’ De Brissac hesitated.
    The tall Finn smiled, leaned further over, grabbed him and drew him up. ‘Even if we are, we’d take you—we can do with real men.
Vite, mon Capitaine
! We haven’t a chance in a hundred, but we’ll take it together.’ De Brissac scrambled on to the rail and was hauled over the gunwale by willing hands.
    The Third Officer clambered into the stern at the same moment. ‘Lower away,’ he thundered in Swedish; and the sailors remaining on the ship’s deck paid out the falls.
    A merciful, but all-too-short, silence ensued as they sank under the lee of the vessel, protected momentarily from the driving spray and cutting wind by its black bulk towering beside them. Entirely out of control, the
Gafelborg
had swung round a little and was wallowing beam-on to the tempest.
    The sailors got out their long, heavy oars and those to starboard used them to fend off the boat from the ship’s side, which, with its portholes still brightly lit, now sloped above, seeming as if about to fall upon them. The others were holding their oars aloft awaiting the officer’s order to lower them to the