An hour later the deck had grown dangerous, even for men. The Queen drove diagonally through the waves, rolling far to right and to left; and at each roll a miniature torrent swept aboard her, hammered on her tightly-fastened doors, and passed, cataract-wise, back into the deep. Scarcely could the officers, high on the bridge, clinging to stanchions and shielded by strong sheets of canvas, keep their footing. Overhead hooted the gale.

It grew dark. To the gloom of the storm had been added the blackness of the night. Literally, no man could see his hand before his face; even the white foam that broke upon the decks or against the sides passed invisibly.

Still, the ship drove on, held relentlessly to her course. For it was necessary to pass the western line of the weed-bound sea before turning to the north; and, until this was done, the Queen could not turn tail to the storm.

Toward morning Captain Bostwick struggled to the chart-house and, for the twentieth time, bent over the sheet, figuring and measuring. Then, with careful precision, he punched a dot in the surface and drew a long breath.

“We are all right now,” he announced. “We can bear away north with safety. Nothing can harm us, unless——”

He opened the last chart of the Hydrographic Office and noted some lines drawn in red. His brow grew anxious again and he drew his breath.

“Confound that derelict!” he muttered. “Allowing for drift, she should be close to this very spot. If we should strike her——”

The sentence was never finished. With a shivering shock like that of a railroad train in a head-on collision, the Queen stopped dead, hurling the captain violently over the rail to the deck below.

The first officer was clutching the rope of the siren when the crash came. The slight support it afforded before it gave way saved him from following his commander, and at the same time sent a raucous warning through the ship to close the collision bulkheads.

As he clung desperately to the rail, the Queen rose in the air and came down with another crash; then went forward over something that grated and tore at her hull as she passed. But her bows were buried in the waves, while her screw lashed the air madly.

Had not the involuntary warning of the siren sounded, and had it not been obeyed instantly, the Queen would have plunged in that heart-breaking moment to the bottom. As it was, her shrift seemed short.

The force of her impact on the lumber-laden, water-logged derelict had shattered her bows, and only the forward bulkhead, strained, split, gaping in a hundred seams where the rivets had been wrenched loose, kept out the sea. A hurried inspection showed that even that frail protection would probably not long suffice.

“It’s only an hour to dawn,” gasped the first officer. “If she can last till then——”

She lasted, but dawn showed a desperate state of affairs. The Queen had swung round, until her submerged bow pointed to windward and her high stern, catching the gale, plunged dully northward. The seas, rushing up from the southeast, broke on the shelving deck like rollers on a beach, and sent the salt spume writhing up the planks and into the deck state-rooms.

The engine