In an instant the situation crystallized itself into a flashing picture upon Anne's mind. She had held the wheel on her father's yacht; but it was not that which made her see. It was divination, which fear or danger sometimes brings to highly sensitized minds--just as it brought the same picture to Sara's mind. With helm thus jambed, it meant that the _D'Estang_ would have to turn in the same direction in which the _Arizona_ was ploughing along at a twelve-knot speed. In making this turn she could not possibly clear, but must strike the battleship. On the other hand she was too near to be stopped in time to avoid going across the bows of that great plunging mass of drab steel, and being cut in two. Anne, crouching immovable, her eyes fixed on Armitage, saw his head half turn in her direction, then with the automatic movement of a machine, he reached for the port engine room telegraph and with a jerk threw the port engine full speed astern. The bridge quivered as though it were being torn from its place; throughout the hull sounded a great metallic clanking. There came a new motion. The destroyer was spinning like a top, the bow almost at a standstill, the stem swinging in a great arc. It was like the working out of a problem in dynamics. Nearer they came. Anne could now make out the great shape of the battleship; the dull funnels belching black clouds of smoke, which, merging with the night, were immediately absorbed; the shadowy, basket-like masts, from which the search-light rays went forth; the long, vaguely protruding twelve-inch guns. A whistle, tremulous and piercing, shrilled along the battleship's deck; dull white figures were clambering into the port life boats. Still closer now! Anne could hear the heavy swish of waters under the _Arizona's_ bows. Her nerves were tight strung, prepared for the crash of steel against steel and the shock of the submersion. There was no sound from the _Arizona_ now. Her bridge had echoed with shouts of warning. The time for that had passed. Armitage had not uttered a sound. Straight he stood by the telegraph, tense and rigid, his hand clutching the lever. Around came the stern with fearful momentum, so close--but clear of the giant hull--that the gunner's mate at the stern torpedo tube took his chew of tobacco and, as he afterwards put it, "torpedoed the battleship with his eyes shut." Now the stern was pointed directly toward the _Arizona_, hardly five yards away. Armitage, bending over the telegraph, jerked sharply upon the lever, throwing the port engine full speed ahead again. He stood up and glanced quickly astern. Like a live thing, the _D'Estang_ jumped clear. Sara leaned heavily on Anne's shoulder with little tearless sobs. But Anne, crouching in the position she had maintained since the search-light had blinded the bridge, still watched Jack with eyes that seemed to transfix him. A figure leaped to the end of the battleship's bridge.