All eyes were now on the schooner. How was she heading? A group of seamen stood beside Armitage and Johnson on the bridge, trying to ascertain that important point. A flash of lightning gave a momentary glance of greasy sails bulged to port. "She 's on the starboard tack, crossing the flotilla!" "All right." There was relief in Jack's voice as he called for full speed ahead. "It's no fun to ram a merchantman, with all the law you get into," said the signal quartermaster, standing near the young women. "And if they hit you, good-bye." But the schooner had a knowing captain. He had no intention of trying to cross all those sharp bows. He quickly tacked between the _D'Estang_ and _Barclay_ and passed the rest of the boats astern. Slowly the boats were loafing along now. At ten-thirty the Jefferson winked her signals at the rest of the flotilla. "Put out all lights." As the young women glanced over the sea the truck lights died responsively. Then the green and red starboard and port lamps and lights in wardroom and galley went out and men hurried along the deck placing tarpaulins over the engine room gratings. Only the binnacle lights remained and these were muffled with just a crack for the helmsman to peer through. A great blackness settled over the waters. To Anne, always an impressionable girl, it was as though all life had suddenly been obliterated from the face of them. Her hand tightened its grasp on Sara's fingers, for as the vessel plunged along there was a palpable impression that the flotilla, now hurrying forward in viewless haste, was pitched for the supreme test. Off to the seaward signal lights from the parent ship _Racine_, having on board the officer in charge of the Navy's mobile defences--which is to say, torpedo boats--had flared and died. The battleships were approaching. Anne, quivering with excitement, peered out through the night; nothing but darkness. Below, lined along the rails, she caught dull outlines of the white caps of the seamen, all as eager to defeat the battleships as their officers. She saw the phosphorescent gleam from a shattered wave. But she heard nothing, not even the swish of water. Johnson approached diffidently, and leaned over the rail at their side, straining his eyes into the night. "The chances of making a successful attack," he said, "are best if we approach from almost ahead, a little on the bow. Then we are lessening the distance between us at the sum of the speeds of the flotilla and the battleships. We 'll hit up about twenty-five knots when we see them. Of--" A low incisive voice sounded forward, a blotch of a hand and arm pointing. There was a movement on the bridge as a dark object came close. It was the _Jefferson_. A dull figure leaned over her bridge with a megaphone. "We 've blown out some boiler tubes and scalded a couple of men, _D'Estang_. Go in ahead." "All right," Jack's voice was muffled.