About this time there came a lull in the hellish, howling hurricane; the fact being, I suppose, that we had reached the centre of the cyclone.  I suggested that we should try to go on deck and see what was happening.  So we started, only to find the entrance to the companion so faithfully secured that we could not by any means get out.  We knocked and shouted, but no one answered.  My belief is that at this time everyone on the yacht except ourselves had been washed away and drowned.

Then we returned to the saloon, which, except for a little water trickling about the floor, was marvelously dry, and, being hungry, retrieved some bits of food and biscuit from its corners and ate.  At this moment the cyclone began to blow again worse than ever, but it seemed to us, from another direction, and before it sped our poor derelict barque.  It blew all day till for my part I grew utterly weary and even longed for the inevitable end.  If my views were not quite those of Bastin, certainly they were not those of Bickley.  I had believed from my youth up that the individuality of man, the ego, so to speak, does not die when life goes out of his poor body, and this faith did not desert me then.  Therefore, I wished to have it over and learn what there might be upon the other side.

We could not speak much because of the howling of the wind, but Bickley did manage to shout to me something to the effect that his partners would, in his opinion, make an end of their great practice within two years, which, he added, was a pity.  I nodded my head, not caring twopence what happened to Bickley’s partners or their business, or to my own property, or to anything else.  When death is at hand most of us do not think much of such things because then we realise how small they are.  Indeed I was wondering whether within a few minutes or hours I should or should not see Natalie again, and if this were the end to which she had seemed to beckon me in that dream.

On we sped, and on.  About four in the afternoon we heard sounds from Bastin’s cabin which faintly reminded me of some tune.  I crept to the door and listened.  Evidently he had awakened and was singing or trying to sing, for music was not one of his strong points, “For those in peril on the sea.”  Devoutly did I wish that it might be heard.  Presently it ceased, so I suppose he went to sleep again.

The darkness gathered once more.  Then of a sudden something fearful happened.  There were stupendous noises of a kind I had never heard; there were convulsions.  It seemed to us that the ship was flung right up into the air a hundred feet or more.

“Tidal wave, I expect,” shouted Bickley.

Almost as he spoke she came down with the most appalling crash on to something hard and nearly jarred the senses out of us.  Next the saloon was whirling round and round and yet being carried forward, and we felt air blowing upon us.  Then our senses left us.  As I clasped Tommy to my side, whimpering and licking my face, my last thought was that all was over, and that presently I should learn everything or nothing.