The Argosy, Vol. XXIV, No. 1 — page 141: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MUTINY ON THE FLYING CLOUD. r41 Quite unmistakable this time ; and the skipper, in a perfect frenzy of ex- citement, repeats his hail time after time, waiting only long enough to receive the answer before hailing again. : Presently a bright star suddenly appears under the faintly gleaming cor- porsants. It is a ship’s lantern held up over the rail. A minute later a tiny spark appears close to the lantern, immediately bursting into a keen bluish glare from which a cloud of white smoke arises and flakes of bluewhite flame drop now and then, as a portfire is burnt. By its brilliant though ghostly radiance the skipper can see, less than half a mile distant, a brig under nothing but close reefed main topsail and fore- topmast staysail—evidently fully prepared for the worst that can come to her in the shape of weather—with a little group of figures gathered about the portfire, and a small group, consisting of two men only, abaft the main rigging, all peering eagerly in his direction. He sees one of the figures raise its arms, and presently there comes float- ing across the inky water : ‘* Halloo, there! Who hails?’’ The skipper again raises his hands to his mouth, draws a mighty inspira- tion, and replies, as the readiest means of bringing succor : ‘‘ Shipwrecked m-a-n. Broad—on—your—port—b-e-a-m !’’ The man who had hailed waves his hand to show that he has heard ; and then the portfire burns out. At this moment the whole firmament from zenith to horizon is rent asunder, and for a single instant the entire universe seems to have been set on fire by the fierce blaze of the lightning which flashes from the rent, while the accompanying thunder crash is so deafening that even the skipper, sea- soned as he is, quails beneath the shock of it. For a single instant the sea and everything upon it, from horizon to horizon, is illumined by a light brighter than that of day; and in that single instant Blake sees not only the brig, enveloped in a perfect network of fire, but also the huge piles of cloud overhead, twisted and distorted into a hundred fantastic shapes by the forces at work within them. The next moment down comes the ‘rain, not in drops, not even in sheets of water, but in a perfectly overwhelming deluge of such density and volume that Blake, bowing to his knees beneath it gasps and chokes like a drowning man. | But he speedily recovers his senses—he had need to, for he will soon want them all—and, staggering to his feet, makes toward the mast, which with the yard and dripping sail is now distinctly outlined against the milky back- ground of sea, milky by reason of the phosphorescence of its surface being lashed into luminosity by the pouring rain. He grasps the halyard of the sail, and with feverish haste proceeds to cast it adrift from its belaying pin, murmuring the while: ‘Now God be merciful to me, a sinner; for Iam too late. The time for rescue is past !’”’ Harry Collingwood. (TO BE CONTINUED. ) COMMiclaoolks =}