‘North, 15 West,’ says the Master; and ‘North, 15 West,’ assents the First Officer, flinging down his pencil. ‘A hundred and seventeen miles, dead in the wind!’ ‘Come on!’ says the Captain; and the two of them dash out of the chart-room into the roaring black night, and up on to the bridge. ‘North, 15 West!’ the Master shouts in the face of the burly helmsman. ‘Over with her, smart!’ ‘North, 15 West, Sir,’ shouts back the big quartermaster, and whirls the spokes to starboard, with the steering-gear engine roaring. The great vessel swings round against the night, with enormous scends, smiting the faces of the great seas with her seventy-feet-high bows. Crash! A roar of water aboard, as a hundred phosphorescent tons of sea-water hurls inboard out of the darkness, and rushes aft along the lower decks, boiling and surging over the hatchways, capstans, deck-fittings, and round the corners of the deck-houses. The ship has hit the fifty-mile-an-hour gale full in the face, and the engine telegraph stands at full speed. The Master has word with that King of the Underworld, the Chief Engineer; and the Chief goes below himself to take charge, just as the Master has taken charge on deck. There is fresh news from the Operator’s Room. The vessel somewhere out in the night and the grim storm is the S.S. _Vanderfield_, with sixty first-class passengers and seven hundred steerage and she is alight forrard. The fire has got a strong hold, and they have already lost three boats, smashed to pieces as they tried to launch them, and every man, woman, and child in the boats crushed to death or drowned. ‘Damn these old-fashioned davits!’ says the Master, as he reads the wireless operator’s notes. ‘They won’t lift a boat out clear of the ship’s side, if she’s rolling a bit. The boats in a ship are just ornaments, if you’ve not got proper machinery for launching them. We’ve got the new derricks, and we can lower a boat, so she strikes the water, forty feet clear of the side, instead of bashing to pieces, like a sixty-foot pendulum, against our side!’ He shouts a question over his shoulder, standing there by the binnacle: ‘What’s she doing, Mister Andrews?’ ‘Twenty and three-quarter knots, Sir,’ says the Second Officer, who has been in charge. ‘But the Chief’s raising her revolutions every minute.... She’s nearly on to the twenty-one now.’ ‘And even if we lick that we’ll be over five hours reaching her,’ mutters the Master to himself. Meanwhile the wireless is beating a message of hope across a hundred miles of night and storm and wild waters. ‘Coming! The R.M.S. _Cornucopia_ is proceeding at full speed in your direction. Keep us informed how you are....’ Then follows a brief unofficial statement, a heart-to-heart word between the young men operators of the two ships, across the hundred-mile gulf of black seas: