My lady passengers had retired to their berths about an hour before; but Sir Edgar, tempted by the beauty and cool freshness of the night, lingered on deck, and--both of us being shod with rubber-soled shoes in order that we might not disturb the repose of the sleepers below--was pacing the weather side of the poop with me, and relating some of his former adventures as a traveller, before he had settled down as a sober, steady, respectable Benedict--as he laughingly put it. Suddenly, as we turned in our walk, within arm's length of the binnacle, we became conscious of a vivid increase of light, and at the same moment an indescribable, deep, hurtling roar smote upon our ears above the startled cry of the helmsman, the loud hum of the wind in our rigging, and the sobbing wash of the sea. The sound and the light so obviously came from overhead that we both involuntarily halted and directed our gaze aloft, when we became aware of an enormous meteor, fully four times the apparent diameter of the moon, and of such dazzling effulgence that our eyes could scarcely endure the brightness of it, while the whole ship, with every minutest detail of spars, rigging, and equipment, was as brilliantly illuminated as at noonday. It was passing, at no very great apparent speed, immediately over our mastheads, in a south-easterly direction, leaving a long trail of evanescent sparks behind it, and as we watched we could see that it was falling toward the sea. "God of mercy--the ship, the _ship_!" gasped Sir Edgar, clutching my arm in a grip that left its mark on the skin for days afterward; and, as he spoke, the huge incandescent mass fell full upon the hull of the _Northern Queen_. There was a flash like that of a bursting shell on board her, and ere we could draw a breath the stately fabric of her spars and sails collapsed and vanished into the deep before our eyes! For some seconds we were all, fore and aft, so paralysed with horror and dismay that not a sound escaped our lips. Even the weird night music of the wind and sea appeared to be hushed for the moment, or our startled senses failed to note it, and presently there came floating down to us upon the pinions of the breeze a muffled, booming _crash_, as confirmatory evidence of the appalling disaster. "Gone--in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!" ejaculated Sir Edgar, with quivering, ashen lips, as he strained his eyes toward the point so recently occupied by our companion. "Oh, captain, can _nothing_ be done? Is there _no_ hope that out there some few survivors at least may be floating on a scrap or two of wreckage? You will go there and see, will you not?"