vessels lay grinding together, and as the tall fabric of the Death Ship leaned to the schooner, you thought she would crush and beat her down, but with the regularity of a pulse the dark folds of water swept the little vessel clear, sometimes raising her when our ship lay aslant to the level of our upper deck, and giving me, therefore, a mighty good prospect of what was happening in her. Both vessels were off the wind and were surging through it with a prodigious hissing betwixt their sides.

The fright of the boarders had proved contagious. I shall never forget the sight! Small as the schooner was, there could not have been less than ninety men on her decks, and they made a very hell of the atmosphere about them with the raving notes in their cries and bawlings. My knowledge of French was small, but some of their screams I could follow, as for instance: "'Tis the Flying Dutchman!"

"Cut us adrift! Cut us adrift!"

"Flatten in those head-sheets! Shove her off! Shove her off! Pole her, my children, with a couple of sweeps!"

"Now she starts. No! What holds her? Ha! ha! the weather topsail-brace has fouled the Hollander's fore-topsail yard-arm. No use going aloft! Let go of it—let go of it—that it may overhaul itself!"

Imagine about four-score throats—some with the guttural thickness of the negro's utterance—all together roaring and delivering orders such as those of which I have given you specimens! Figure the decks throbbing with men rushing with apparent aimlessness from one side to the other, from one end to the other—not a vestige of discipline among them—a drowning yell or two coming up from between the ships where some wretch that had fallen overboard was holding on—the sails shaking, the water washing beyond in a glaring white that gave a startling distinctness to the shape of the schooner as she rose softly to the level of our upper deck bulwarks upon the seething snow!

Why, no matter how strongly imagination should present the picture, what is the simulacrum as compared to that reality which I need but close these eyes to witness afresh? The wildness of the scene took a particular spirit from the frowning, rocking mass of the Death Ship—the tomb-like silence in her—the still and glooming shapes watching the throes and convulsions of the terrified Frenchmen and negroes from the poop and forward over the rail—the diabolic glowing in her timbers—the swaying of her dusky canvas like the nodding of leviathan funeral plumes—the dance of the slender slip of moon among the rigging, defining the vast platforms of the barricaded tops, monstrous bulgings of blackness up there as though a body of electric cloud swung bulbously at each lower masthead.

They had the sense to cut the lines which held them by their grapnels to our ship, and presently to my great joy—for if they were true pirates, as there was good reason to believe from their appearance and manner of laying us aboard, 'twas impossible to feel sure that the fiercer spirits among them might not presently rally the rest—the schooner went scraping and forging past ahead of us; snapping her topgallant mast short off, with the royal yard upon it, by some brace, stay or backstay fouling us in a way the darkness would not suffer me to witness, and in a few minutes she had crossed our bows and was running away into the north east, rapidly expanding her canvas as she went, and quickly melting into the darkness.

I stopped to fetch a few breaths and to make sure of the Frenchman's evanishment by watching. More excitement and dread had been packed into this time than I know how to tell of.

I slipped to the hatch on the upper deck, descended a tread or two, and softly called. In a minute I espied the white face of my dearest upturned to me amidst the well-like obscurity.

"They are gone," said I, "the danger is over."

She instantly stepped up.

"I heard you cry out 'The Flying Dutchman! Save yourselves!'" she exclaimed, with a music almost of merriment in her voice. "It was a bold fancy! What helter-skelter followed!"

I took her hand and we entered the cabin. The richly-coloured old lamp was alight, the clock ticked hoarsely, you heard the scraping of the parrot clawing about her cage.

"Oh," she cried, "what a dismal place is that they have given you to sleep in! I believed I was hardened to the dreadful flickerings upon the deck and sides, but they scared me to the heart in that cell—and the noises too in the hold! Oh, Geoffrey, how severe is our fate! Shall we ever escape?"

"Yes, my dearest, but not by ships, as I have all along told you. A chance will offer, and be you sure, Imogene, it will find me ready. Wondrous is God's ordering! Think, my dear, that in the very Curse that rests upon this ship has lain our salvation! Suppose this vessel any other craft and boarded by those villains, negroes of the Antilles, and white ruffians red-handed from the Spanish Main—'tis likely they were so and are cruising here for the rich traders—by this time where would my soul be? and you—ay, there is a virtue in this Curse! It is a monstrous thought—but, indeed, I could take Vanderdecken by the hand for the impiety that has carried you clear of a destiny as awful in its way as the doom these unhappy wretches are immortally facing."

She shuddered and wept a little, and looked at me with eyes the brighter for those tears which I dared not kiss away in that public cabin.

CHAPTER IV.
MY LIFE IS AGAIN ATTEMPTED.

Vanderdecken and the mate came below soon after this, and Prins set a bowl of punch before them. The captain seated himself in his solemn way, and the mate took Imogene's place—that is, over against my seat—she being at my side. They filled their pipes and smoked in a silence that, saving Vanderdecken's asking me to drink, would, I believe, have remained unbroken but for Imogene.

She said: "Captain, there is no fear, I hope, of those pirates attempting to board us again in the darkness?"

"Did Herr Fenton tell you they were pirates?" he replied, with the unsmiling softness of expression he was used to look upon her with.

"Surely they were pirates?" she cried.

"Be it so, my child," said he, "what doth it signify? They are gone; I do not fear they will return."

Being extremely curious to know what sense he had of this strange adventure, I exclaimed, "It is very surprising, mynheer, that a score of ruffians, armed to the teeth, should fling themselves into this ship for no other purpose, seemingly, than to leap out of her again."

"They imagined us English, Herr Fenton," said Van Vogelaar, with a snarl in his voice and a sneer on his lip.

I did not instantly catch the drift of his sarcasm.

"Doth any man suppose," said Vanderdecken, rearing his great figure and proudly surveying me, "that the guns of our admirals have thundered in vain? You seek an interpretation of the Frenchman's behaviour? Surely by this time all Englishmen should understand the greatness of the terror our flag everywhere strikes! Twice you have witnessed this—in the hasty retreat of your man-of-war, and this night in the conduct of the French schooner. Tell me," he cried, with new fires leaping into his eyes, "how I am to resolve the panic-terror of the boarding party, if I am not to believe that until they were on our decks, had looked round them and beheld our men, they knew