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Rh the dark mass floating only two feet above the water, and just a shade darker than the surrounding waves.

"A derelict!" came the cry.

"Dang that black cat! We might have knowed it."

The ship's carpenter reached the quarter deck.

"She's filling a hundred to the minute," he panted out, "she'll founder in ten."

"All hands to the boats!" megaphoned Ben through his trumpeted hands, but there was little need for the command. The panic-stricken crew were sprawling and sliding over the slanting decks to port and starboard.

The Chinese cook stumbled out from the galley, the oblique slits of his eyes turning almost to full oval as they rolled in an ecstasy of fear. He was jabbering a strange heathenish prayer and for defense against the raging elements, he carried a meat-cleaver, weapon futile enough. A heavy sea, breaking over the port side, silenced his uncouth orisons and hurled him, weapon and all, at the mast, then over the taffrail, as it might a tiny cork—and on out into the darkness.

A little mongrel dog, yellow as his vanished master, for whom he had conceived a strange and currish affection, had followed the cook up the ladder, and stood shivering and whimpering on the companionway. But there was no pity even for his helplessness. Like a little trick dog, striving for balance on the top of some elephant suddenly gone mad in a stampeded circus, he seemed, his forefeet churning the crest of the long greyback that carried him over.

Nine hands reached the lifeboats, four on the port, five on the starboard side. The one who in the earlier watches had