And then the wind came, smack out of the blackness, with the abruptness of thunder and accompanied by the most diabolical thunder. And with the rain and thunder came the blackness. It was tangible. It drove past us in the bellowing wind like so much stuff that one could feel. Blackness as well as wind impacted on us. There is no other way to describe it than by the old, ancient old, way of saying one could not see his hand before his face. “Isn’t it splendid!” Miss West shouted into my ear, close beside me, as we clung to the railing of the break of the poop. “Superb!” I shouted back, my lips to her ear, so that her hair tickled my face. And, I know not why—it must have been spontaneous with both of us—in that shouting blackness of wind, as we clung to the rail to avoid being blown away, our hands went out to each other and my hand and hers gripped and pressed and then held mutually to the rail. “Daughter of Herodias,” I commented grimly to myself; but my hand did not leave hers. “What is happening?” I shouted in her ear. “We’ve lost way,” came her answer. “I think we’re caught aback! The wheel’s up, but she could not steer!” The Gabriel voice of the Samurai rang out. “Hard over?” was his mellow storm-call to the man at the wheel. “Hard over, sir,” came the helmsman’s reply, vague, cracked with strain, and smothered. Came the lightning, before us, behind us, on every side, bathing us in flaming minutes at a time. And all the while we were deafened by the unceasing uproar of thunder. It was a weird sight—far aloft the black skeleton of spars and masts from which the sails had been removed; lower down, the sailors clinging like monstrous bugs as they passed the gaskets and furled; beneath them the few set sails, filled backward against the masts, gleaming whitely, wickedly, evilly, in the fearful illumination; and, at the bottom, the deck and bridge and houses of the _Elsinore_, and a tangled riff-raff of flying ropes, and clumps and bunches of swaying, pulling, hauling, human creatures. It was a great moment, the master’s moment—caught all aback with all our bulk and tonnage and infinitude of gear, and our heaven-aspiring masts two hundred feet above our heads. And our master was there, in sheeting flame, slender, casual, imperturbable, with two men—one of them a murderer—under him to pass on and enforce his will, and with a horde of inefficients and weaklings to obey that will, and pull, and haul, and by the sheer leverages of physics manipulate our floating world so that it would endure this fury of the elements.