Every lantern in the _Firefly_ was now brought on deck and bent on to ropes, the boats were cleared away for hoisting out, fenders were hung over the side, and life-buoys and belts cut away. Again came the crashing, rasping sound, as the hull of the lugger, which was evidently stove in, swerved alongside the yacht, across the deck of which her mainmast fell with a crash, bringing down the fore-topmast of the former with all its top hamper, making her for the time also a helpless wreck. A block swinging at the end of a rope struck Sir Ranald Cheyne and hurled him on the deck. Alison bent over him in despair and terror indescribable and unutterable, feeling scarcely able to restrain the conviction that all this was really happening to herself. 'We are bulged forward, and water is rising fast below now, my lord,' reported the carpenter, rushing up to Cadbury, who seemed paralysed with terror. 'Stand by the fall-tackles, and lower away the boats,' ordered Tom Llanyard, whose voice could scarcely be heard amid the hubbub on board the lugger, which was still alongside. Fully five minutes elapsed before this was done; one fall-tackle got jammed in the davit-block, another boat was without its plug, and, barely had the two boats of the _Firefly_ touched the water, when, knife in hand, the terrified crew of the lugger began to crowd into them. By this time poor Alison had fainted, with little Daisy Prune crawling close to her side, and was in blessed unconsciousness of the awful scene around her presented by so many men struggling for life, and drowning, as both vessels began apparently to settle gradually down into the black and silent midnight sea. CHAPTER III. THE BALL. Much about the time of the disaster we have recorded, some other of our _dramatis personæ_ were actors amid a very different scene. A star-lighted but moonless sky overhung the stately modern mansion of Wilmothurst, and gloomy indeed would the long, wintry avenue have looked, but for the many-coloured lamps that shed a soft radiance from branch to branch, and from one gnarled stem to another, lighting the gravelled way for the fast-rolling carriages that came in quick succession to the Tuscan _porte-cochère_, setting down the shawled and daintily-shod guests, where a scarlet carpeting extended from the doorway to the terrace. The great house was all ablaze with lights that glowed from every lofty window, and made the owls wink and blink in the tower of the village church; while a huge fire in the arched fireplace of the entrance-hall sent forth a ruddy glow every time the tall double doors were unfolded to admit a guest.