Chance

Silently Mr. Powell inverted the holder, smothering the flame in the can,

bringing about by the mere turn of his wrist the fall of darkness upon

the poop. And at the same time vanished out of his mind's eye the vision

of another flame enormous and fierce shooting violently from a white

churned patch of the sea, lighting up the very clouds and carrying

upwards in its volcanic rush flying spars, corpses, the fragments of two

destroyed ships. It vanished and there was an immense relief. He told

me he did not know how scared he had been, not generally but of that very

thing his imagination had conjured, till it was all over. He measured it

(for fear is a great tension) by the feeling of slack weariness which

came over him all at once.

He walked to the companion and stooping low to put the flare in its usual

place saw in the darkness the motionless pale oval of Mrs. Anthony's

face. She whispered quietly: "Is anything going to happen? What is it?"

"It's all over now," he whispered back.

He remained bent low, his head inside the cover staring at that white

ghostly oval. He wondered she had not rushed out on deck. She had

remained quietly there. This was pluck. Wonderful self-restraint. And

it was not stupidity on her part. She knew there was imminent danger and

probably had some notion of its nature.

"You stayed here waiting for what would come," he murmured admiringly.

"Wasn't that the best thing to do?" she asked.

He didn't know. Perhaps. He confessed he could not have done it. Not

he. His flesh and blood could not have stood it. He would have felt he

must see what was coming. Then he remembered that the flare might have

scorched her face, and expressed his concern.

"A bit. Nothing to hurt. Smell the singed hair?"

There was a sort of gaiety in her tone. She might have been frightened

but she certainly was not overcome and suffered from no reaction. This

confirmed and augmented if possible Mr. Powell's good opinion of her as a

"jolly girl," though it seemed to him positively monstrous to refer in

such terms to one's captain's wife. "But she doesn't look it," he

thought in extenuation and was going to say something more to her about

the lighting of that flare when another voice was heard in the companion,

saying some indistinct words. Its tone was contemptuous; it came from

below, from the bottom of the stairs. It was a voice in the cabin. And

the only other voice which could be heard in the main cabin at this time

of the evening was the voice of Mrs. Anthony's father. The indistinct

white oval sank from Mr. Powell's sight so swiftly as to take him by

surprise. For a moment he hung at the opening of the companion and now

that her slight form was no longer obstructing the narrow and winding

staircase the voices came up louder but the words were still indistinct.

The old gentleman was excited about something and Mrs. Anthony was

"managing him" as Powell expressed it. They moved away from the bottom

of the stairs and Powell went away from the companion. Yet he fancied he

had heard the words "Lost to me" before he withdrew his head. They had

been uttered by Mr. Smith.