“Aye,” breathed the Skipper. He made out the shadow, not altogether with his eyes--the deeper senses do the work on such nights--and let her pay off. “But we can’t run this way long--we’d be smothered in the shoal water.” Again he tacked, again in a shadow of sails. “She’s in the same fix,” he muttered, and tacked again. No shadow pressed and he drew breath, but hardly a whole breath, when again voices, from aloft as well as from across the water. All about him he looked to make out. When he did make out anything there were two of them--one to each side. There was nothing to do, then, but try to outrun them both. He eased off his sheets and away went the old _Pantheon_. “Running to perdition if I hold this long.” He could hear the roar quite plainly now, and, hearing it, groaned. “But I’ve got to keep clear. God! why don’t they hold up?” And then it came--from straight ahead and so suddenly that no human power could avert, no quickness of hand or eye or trick of seamanship or weatherliness of vessel could avail. Head on to the old _Pantheon_ it was--a phantom of white above and a band of black below showed through the driving snow. One awful wait that was worse than the actual collision, and then it came. The _Pantheon_ cut into the other’s topside planking, her bowsprit bore through the other’s rigging and foresail--cr-s-sh!--cr-s-sh!--the smash of breaking timbers, the tearing of stiff canvas, and above all the howl of the wild gale. Men hailed out questions, oaths, and words that no man could understand. They held so, the bow of one into the waist of the other, long enough for men from the _Pantheon_ to leap aboard the other and then to leap back. “Man, she’s worse than we are!” shouted one, as back he came. The sea poured in by way of the great gashes. A moment more and it poured unchecked over the _Pantheon’s_ rails. Then the spars of the stranger went over the side and across the _Pantheon’s_ deck. Somebody moaned that he was hurt, but there was no time to find out who. The stranger’s dory bobbing up alongside, one man made a wild leap for it, fell short, and that ended him, though that mattered not much--he had no chance either way. Others--wraith-like voices--were heard calling from the sea before they went under smothering. One man called to a mate, “Take hold, boy,” and both rode grimly to their death, cresting high the great seas, astraddle the _Pantheon’s_ chain-box. Dannie clung to the wheel, hoping that the wind and sea would carry the _Pantheon_ clear, and that, being ready, he might force her off. But not so. They did come apart, but apart they settled even more rapidly. The stranger went down stern first; the _Pantheon_ stern hove high, pointed her bow after the stranger, and began to settle that way, bow first.