Evelyn was wakened by a peal of thunder, and as she drowsily lifted her head a blaze of lightning filled the narrow room. It vanished and there was another deafening crash. The darkness was now impenetrable, but the startled girl had seen that the deck was sharply slanted and her clothes hung at a wide angle to the paneling of the bulkhead. It was obvious that the Enchantress was listed down nearly on her beam ends. A confused uproar was going on, and Evelyn thought she could distinguish the beating of heavy rain upon the deckhouse. This, however, was only for a few moments, because the other noises swelled into an overwhelming din.

Dropping from her berth, she began to dress in the dark, but found it difficult to keep her footing on the slanted deck, which lurched and threw her against the lockers, while the planking worked and shook with the throb of engines. Evelyn could not hear them, but the strong vibration showed that they were running fast.

It cost her an effort to refrain from rushing out on deck. Buttons baffled her nervous fingers, the pins she tried to use instead doubled up, but she persevered. She would not leave her room until she was ready: if the worst came, she could not make an open-boat voyage in a disheveled state. That this should seem of importance did not strike her as curious then, but she afterward blushed as she remembered her determination to look as well as possible.

At last she opened the door and stepped out, ankle-deep in water. She was to lee of the deckhouse, and, seizing the hand-rail, tried to look about. The rain did not seem so heavy now, and the house sheltered her, although clouds of spray were flying across its top. A few feet away, the low bulwark was faintly distinguishable, but outside this there was only a dim glimmer of foam in the dark. The Enchantress had the wind and sea on her broadside. This surprised Evelyn, because it was not a safe position if the gale were as bad as it seemed. Then a shower of sparks leaped from the funnel and by the momentary light they gave she saw a white streak, cleanly cut off and slanting downward, at the crown of the escape pipe. Evidently, Macallister had raised more steam than he could use.

Wondering why Grahame had not brought the vessel head to wind, she moved aft cautiously, clinging to the rail, until she saw that the awning had broken loose from its lashings. Part of it thrashed about the deck, making a furious noise, but the rest, blown forward, had fouled the foresail boom, and was stretched tight, but distended like a half-filled balloon. Acting as a sail, it prevented the steamer from answering her helm. One or two very indistinct figures struggled with the canvas, but they seemed unable to master it, and Evelyn crept on until she could look through the skylight into the engine-room. It was here the real battle must be fought, for the cylinders that strained under top pressure were the vitals of the ship. She could see them shake, as if about to burst their fastening bolts and leap from the columns, as the big cross-heads banged up and down.

The iron room was well lighted, though the lamps hung at an alarming angle to the beams, and there was a confused glimmer of steel that flashed through the light and plunged into shadow. A half-naked man lay on a narrow grating, leaning down and touching a ponderous mass of metal as it swept past. In the momentary intervals before it came back he rubbed the bright slide it traveled on with a greasy swab, and the girl knew how important it was that nothing should get hot. The work was dangerous, because the least clumsiness might cost him his arm. When he stopped and turned sideways on the grating the light touched his face, and Evelyn started as she recognized Walthew.

He had enjoyed all the comforts and refinements to which she was accustomed, and it was from choice and not necessity that he was doing this rough, hazardous work. There were obviously people who did not attach an undue value to the ease that wealth could buy; this boy, for example, had left the safe, beaten track, and now, when still weak from fever, was taking the consequences without dismay. It looked as if there might be something wrong with her mother's philosophy; but she could think of this better when there was less risk of the steamer's foundering.

A man came along the deckhouse and put his arm round her waist as the ship gave a wild lurch. Evelyn laughed as she recognized her father. For a moment she had thought it was Grahame. Holding her tight, Cliffe moved on a yard or two, and then stopped at the corner of the house, where they could see something of what was going on.

It was lighter now that the rain had stopped, and presently a ray of moonlight traveled across the sea and touched the laboring vessel. Hove down by the pressure of the wind on deckhouse and awning, she had buried her lee bulwarks and lifted her weather side. Sheets of water blew across her, and the sea looked white as snow. It was not running high: the heavy rain had beaten down the swell; but it would soon rise, and unless the vessel could be brought head to wind the combers would sweep her deck.

As the beam of moonlight widened, the figures of the toiling men grew clear. One was clinging to the top of a tall stanchion in a grotesque monkey-like attitude, trying to cut loose the awning, for a knife sparkled in his hand. Another crouched on the deck with folds of the canvas in his arms. Miguel was bent over the wheel. The tenseness of his pose and his hard-set face suggested heavy muscular strain.

Grahame stood near by, his hand on a stay, swaying with the movement of the steamer. He was bareheaded and the spray lashed his face, but there was something that reassured the girl in his tranquillity.

It was useless to speak. The voice would have been drowned by the roar of the gale, while wire-shroud and chain-guy shrilled in wild harmonies. Evelyn stood fascinated, watching the quick, tense movements of the crew.

Presently Grahame turned his head, and, seeing them against the deckhouse, pointed toward the sea. Following his gesture, Evelyn saw a blurred object leap out of the dark. It grew suddenly into definite form as it drove across the belt of moonlight: a small wooden barque with a deck-load of timber, staggering before the hurricane.

Fluttering rags showed where her maintopsail had blown from the ropes; curved ribands, held fast at head and foot, marked what was left of her fore-course, and puny figures dotted the yards, struggling futilely with clewed-up canvas that bulged out as if inflated hard. She had a torn jib and topsails set—strips of sail that looked absurdly small by comparison with the foam-lapped hull, but they were bearing her on at tremendous speed. Caught, no doubt lightly manned, by the sudden gale, they had had no time to shorten sail and bring her head to sea. She must run with what canvas was left her until the tornado broke, unless she broached to and her heavy deckload rolled her over.

So far, Evelyn had not felt much fear. There was something in the mad fury of the elements that, for a time, banished thought of personal danger. She was overwhelmed and yet conscious of a strange excitement; but the sight of the helpless ship had a daunting effect. Belted with leaping foam, bows up, poop down, the dripping hull drove by, plowing a snowy furrow through the tormented sea. When she plunged into the dark Evelyn was glad that she had gone. She wondered what could be done in this wild weather if the Enchantress would not come round. But she had confidence in Grahame. As she looked at him he commandingly raised his hand.

Two men scrambled forward and a dark patch rose at the bows. It swelled and emptied, but the canvas held, and Grahame struggled forward to help the others. The sail might stand if they could hoist it before it split. It ran higher up the stay; the Enchantress slowly fell off before the wind, and then leaped ahead with her bows lifted out of the foam.

Evelyn drew a deep breath of relief, for the immediate danger was over, and the vessel might run out of the worst of the storm. Cliffe nodded when she looked at him, and with some trouble they made their way into the house, where, with the door shut, they could hear themselves speak. Evelyn was wet with spray, but there was a high color in her face and her eyes shone. As she sat down, the house shook beneath a blow, and there was a savage flapping on the roof. Then something seemed driven across it, and they could hear only the wind and the sea again.

"The awning!" Cliffe said. "They've managed to cut it loose now that she's before the wind. I guess Grahame would rather have brought her head-on, but he won't have much trouble if they can keep her from broaching to. Were you scared?"

"No," Evelyn answered thoughtfully. "I suppose it was so appalling that I couldn't realize the danger. I really feel that I'd be sorry if I'd missed it."

Cliffe made a sign of comprehension.

"Well, this is the first time you've seen men hard up against a big thing. It's an illuminating experience; though a large number of people never get it. Some of them seem to imagine things go right of themselves, and there's no call now for strength and nerve. Anyhow, I was glad to feel that Grahame knew his business."

Evelyn was silent for a few moments. Her clothes were wet and ought to be changed, but the tension on her nerves had not slackened much, and she felt restless and unwilling to be alone. Besides, there was a mild satisfaction in doing something imprudent, and she thought the storm had roused her father into a talkative mood. While indulgent to her, he was often marked by a certain reserve, which she had noticed her mother never tried to penetrate.

"I wonder why you decided to cross in this little boat, when we could have gone by one of the big passenger liners?" she said.

"Saved waiting, for one thing," Cliffe answered in a deprecatory tone. "Then I'll confess that I felt I'd like to do something that wasn't quite usual."

Evelyn laughed.

"It isn't a wish one would suspect you of."

"Well," Cliffe said with a twinkle, "I guess it was boyish, but we all have our weaknesses, though I don't often indulge mine. I find it doesn't pay. I'm a sober business man, but there's a streak of foolishness in me. Sometimes it works out and I feel that I want a frolic, for a change."

"Then you must have exercised some self-control."

"When I was a young man, I found my job square in front of me. I had to sit tight in the office, straighten out a business that had got rather complicated, and expand it if possible. It wasn't quite all I wanted to do, but I'd a notion that I could make my pile and then let myself go. It took me some years to get things straight, the pile was harder to make than I reckoned, and your mother had a use for all the money I could raise. Her ambition was to put the family high up in the social scale—and she's done it.""So you stifled your longings and went on making money that we might have every advantage!" Evelyn said with a guilty feeling. "I feel ashamed when I realize it."

"I've been repaid," Cliffe replied. "Then, after a time, my job became congenial and got hold of me. The work became a habit; I didn't really want to break away." He paused and resumed with a humorous air: "It's only at odd moments I play with the notion that I'd like something different. I know it would jar me if I got it; and I'm getting old."

Evelyn mused. Her father's story had its pathetic side. Though they had not much in common, he had been her mother's willing slave: toiling in the city to further plans which Evelyn suspected he would not have made. In a sense, his life had been bare and monotonous; there was something he had missed. Evelyn thought that he recognized this, though not with regret.

She started as Grahame came in. Salt water dripped from him and gathered in a pool on the floor, but he turned to them with a smile.

"The wind is dropping fast, and the sea hadn't time to get up. We had some trouble at first when the awning blew out of its lashings and stopped her coming round, but she steered all right as soon as we got her before the sea."

"We were on deck most of the time," Evelyn said.

Grahame laughed as he recalled their conversation in the early evening.

"After what you must have seen," he asked, "don't you agree that there are advantages in keeping in smooth water?""Oh, one can't deny it. For all that, my experience to-night strengthens my belief that there's something very exhilarating in taking a risk."

She went out on deck and stood for a minute or two, holding on by a shroud. There was now no fury in the wind, and the moon was bright. The swell had gathered itself up into tumbling combers that shook their crests about the rail as the Enchantress lurched over them. A few torn clouds drove across the southern sky, but the rest of the wide sweep was clear and the scene was steeped in harmonies of silver and dusky blue. By daybreak the vessel would be steaming on an even keel, but Evelyn knew that she would not again be content with glassy calm and languorous tranquillity. The turmoil of the storm had made a subtle change in her; it was as if she had heard a call in the elemental clamor and her heart had answered.