We managed to get into the boat without any of us getting all wet, and pushed off. We drove out into the teeth of the wind, the waves seeming much bigger now we were amongst them and out in the open Firth. Not a sign of yacht could be seen. To us strangers the whole thing was an act of faith. Presently Pearce gave an order and we burned a blue light, which was after a while answered from far off—a long, long distance off, we thought, as we looked across the waste of black troubled water, looking more deadly than ever in the blue light—though it looked even more deadly when the last of the light fell hissing into the wave. By this time matters were getting really serious. Some one had to keep baling all the time, and on the weather side we had to sit shoulder to shoulder as close as we could so that the waves might break on our backs and not over the gunwale. It was just about as unpleasant an experience as one could have. I drew the lad next to me as close as I could, partly to comfort him and more particularly lest he should get frightened and try to leave his place. And yet all the time we were a merry party. Ellen Terry with the strong motherhood in her all awake—a lesson and a hallowed memory—was making cheery remarks and pointing out to her boy the many natural beauties with which we were surrounded: the distant lights, the dim line of light above the shore line, the lurid light of Greenock on the sky. She thought of only one thing, her little boy, and that he might not suffer the pain of fear. The place seemed to become beautiful in the glow of her maternity. He did not say much in answer— not in any enthusiastic way; but he was not much frightened. Cold waves of exceeding violence, driven up your back by a fierce wind which beats the spray into your neck, hardly make a cheerful help to the enjoyment of the æsthetic! Irving sat stolid and made casual remarks such as he would have made at his own fireside. His quiet calm, I think, allayed nervous tremors in some of the others. I really think he enjoyed the situation—in a way. As for Pearce, who held the tiller himself, he was absolutely boisterous with joviality, though he once whispered in my ear: “Keep it up! We shall be all right; but I don’t want any of them to get frightened. It is pretty serious!” I think we settled in time into a sort of that calm acceptance of fact which is so real a tribute to Belief. It certainly startled us a little when we heard a voice hailing us with a speaking-trumpet—a voice which seemed close to us. Then a light flashed out and we saw the _Lady Torfrida_ rising high from the water whereon she floated gracefully, just swaying with wave and wind. She was a big yacht with 600 h.p. engines, after the model of those of the _Alaska_, one of Pearce’s building, then known as the “Greyhound of the ocean!”