Then followed a quarter of an hour that seemed like a lifetime. As I stood craning my neck forward, gazing under my hands seaward, there crowded into my memory visions of all my past life. I seemed to see the home of my boyhood, and looked again into my mother's face. And I stood once more before my case in the shop outside Temple Bar, and listened to Peter Stoupe humming his psalm-tune, and heard my types click into the stick. I marched once more at the head of my clubs to Finsbury Fields, and there I saw Captain Merriman--drat him!--with his vile lips at a maiden's ear. And I passed, too, along the village street at Kingston where met me my mistress and her sweet daughter; and as I looked back, Jeannette turned too and-- What was that? Surely in the darkness I saw something! No. All was pitch black. The wind roared through the rigging, and the water seethed up at the plunging prow. But though I saw nothing, I felt the pursuer near; so near, I wondered not to hear the swish of her keel through the waves. On we went and nearer and nearer we seemed together. Oh for one sign of them, were it even a gun across our path! But sign there came none. The darkness seemed blacker than ever and-- All of a sudden I seemed to detect something--a spark, or a glow, or the luminous break of a wave. So swiftly it came and went, that it was gone before I could look. A trick of my vision, thought I. No! there it was again, this time nothing but a spark, close by, on a level, perhaps, with our mizzen. So near was it, I wondered whether it might not be the lighting of a match at our own guns. It went again: and as it did so, my finger, almost without my knowing it, tightened on the trigger of my pistol and it went off. At the same moment, there was a blaze, a roar, a crash, and a shout. For an instant the _Misericorde_ reeled in her course and quivered from stern to stern. Then, another shout and a wild irregular roar astern. Then our good ship gathered herself together and leapt forward once more into the darkness, and the peril was passed. All was over so suddenly that the pistol was still smoking in my hand as I leapt from the forecastle and rushed aft. "Is all well?" I shouted. "All well," said Ludar, quietly. "She grazed our poop and no more." "And the maiden?" said I. "All well," cried she, cheerily from the helm, "and fair in the wind." "Stand at your posts still," cried Ludar. So for another half-hour yet we stood at our posts, just as we had stood before the crisis came; and not a word said any one. Then in the stormy east came a faint flush of dawn, and we knew that this perilous night was over. "Seaman," said Ludar, "relieve the maiden at the helm, and bid her come hither." She came, radiant and triumphant. "Sir Ludar," she said, "I thank you for letting me hold the helm this night. You gave it me as the place of safety; but I had my revenge, since it proved the post of honour."