"It wasn't there!" the wheelsman cried. "It's—it's been there all the time all night, and I'd—I'd steered through it ten times, twenty times, every few minutes; and then—that time it was a ship!"
Alan's excitement grew greater; he seized the old man again. "You thought it was the Miwaka!" Alan exclaimed. "The Miwaka! And you tried to steer through it again."
"The Miwaka!" old Burr's lips reiterated the word. "Yes; yes—the Miwaka!"
He struggled, writhing with some agony not physical. Alan tried to hold him, but now the old man was beside himself with dismay. He broke away and started aft. The captain's voice recalled Alan to himself, as he was about to follow, and he turned back to the wheelhouse.
The mate was at the wheel. He shouted to the captain about following the other ship; neither of them had seen sign of any one aboard it. "Derelict!" the skipper thought. The mate was swinging Number 25 about to follow and look at the ship again; and the searchlight beam swept back and forth through the snow; the blasts of the steam whistle, which had ceased after the collision, burst out again. As before, no response came from behind the snow. The searchlight picked up the silent ship again; it had settled down deeper now by the bow, Alan saw; the blow from Number 25 had robbed it of its last buoyancy; it was sinking. It dove down, then rose a little—sounds came from it now—sudden, explosive sounds; air pressure within hurled up a hatch; the tops of the cabins blew off, and the stem of the ship slipped down deep again, stopped, then dove without halt or recovery this time,
