Courtenay did not experience the least fear of death. Emotion of any sort was already dead in him. He found himself wondering if an unexpectedly strong current, setting to the southeast, had not upset his reckoning—if there were any broken limbs among the occupants of the saloon—if Elsie had been injured by being thrown down into his cabin. He looked at his watch; it was past eleven. In four hours there would be dawn. Dawn! In as many minutes he might see the day that is everlasting. . . . Ah! Perhaps not even four minutes! The _Kansas_, with a shiver, lifted to the embrace of a heavy sea, lurched to port, and settled herself more comfortably. The deck assumed an easier angle. Now it was possible to walk. There were no rocks here, at any rate. Courtenay at once jumped to the conclusion that the powerful current whose existence he suspected had cut out for itself a deep-water channel towards the land, and the ship had struck on the silt of its back-wash. Anyhow, the _Kansas_ was still living. The lights were all burning steadily. He could detect the rhythmic throb of the donkey-engine. He felt it like the faint beat of a pulse. In her new position the ship presented less of a solid wall to the onslaught of the sea. The tumultuous waves began to race past without breaking so fiercely. Had she started her plates? Were the holds and engine-room full of water? If so, Walker and his helpers were already drowning beneath his feet. And, when next she moved, the vessel might slip away into the depths! These and kindred thoughts, thoughts without sequence and almost without number, flew through his mind with incredible speed. They were lucid and reasoned, their pros and cons equally dealt with—he could have answered any question on each point were it propounded by a board of examiners—and all this took place within a few seconds, between the impact of one big wave and another. A man rushed by, or tried to do so. Courtenay recognized him as a leading stoker who had temporary charge of the donkey-boiler and seized him wrathfully, his eyes ablaze. “Go back!” he roared. “Señor! The ship is lost!” “Go back, and await my orders.” He could have strangled the fugitive in his sudden rage. The fireman endeavored to gasp his readiness to obey. Courtenay relaxed his grip, and, for a time, at least one member of the crew stuck to his post, fearing the mad captain more than death. A mob of stewards and kitchen hands came in a torrent up the saloon stairs. Courtenay met them, a terrifying figure, and thrust a revolver in their faces. “Back!” he shouted, “or some of you will die here.” Even in their frenzy they believed him. The foremost slunk away, and fought in a new terror with those who would urge them on. Gray, bleeding from a cut across the forehead, knocked down a man who brutally tore Isobel out of his path. Tollemache, a revolver in each hand, set his back against the corner of the saloon at the foot of the stairs.