Again came the voice of the lookout and the arm pointed ahead. "Oh!" Anne pinched Sara's arm. "I see them. See those great black shadows over there?" She stepped forward. "Shall I tell them?" But Armitage had seen. He turned to the yeoman. "Full speed, ahead!" "Full speed, ahead, sir." The slender hull throbbed with the giant pulsings of the two sets of engines. There was not another sound. It was as though the vessel were plunging through an endless void. In the darkness astern arose a spear-like puff of crimson flame. Again it appeared and again, quivering, sinister. "Damn the _Barclay_; she's torching!" There came a shout from out of the dark and in an instant two great beams of lambent light cut wide swaths through the pall. They were too high; they missed the _D'Estang_ altogether and rested on the _Barclay's_ smoke, which rose and tumbled and billowed and writhed like a heavy shroud in the ghastly shafts. "They 've missed us and are trying to get the _Barclay_. Come on!" Jack's voice was vibrant with the joy of the test. He was kneeling on the bridge, a megaphone in his hand. He turned it toward the women. "Crouch down beside that gun and stay down, please, until this is over." As he spoke, the leading battleship, the dreadnaught _Arizona_, was getting her searchlight beams down, and all unseen, the _D'Estang_ and she were approaching each other at a total speed of thirty-seven knots. Nearer they came and the destroyer was almost to the great dark blur, with the shining arms radiating from her like living tails from a dead comet, when, with terrible suddenness and intensity almost burning, the _Arizona_ flashed a sixty-inch searchlight directly down on the destroyer's bridge. Sara stifled a scream and Anne bowed her head to the deck to shut out the fearful blaze. Armitage, standing upright now and rubbing open his eyes, saw that the time had come to turn, and quickly. The _D'Estang_ was approaching the battleship, pointing toward her port bow. The idea of the manoeuvre was to turn in a semicircle, passing the _Arizona_ at a distance of about two hundred yards. He shouted the order. "Hard--a--port." There was an instant's silence and the face of the quartermaster was seen to turn pale in the glare of the relentless searchlight. "Wheel rope carried away, sir." Armitage fairly threw himself across the bridge, but Johnson was there first. Quiet, unemotional Johnson, his hat off now, his hair dishevelled, and his eyes blazing. "The helm is jambed hard a-starboard!" he cried.