flung the five men back against the quarter. One of the black sailors
was pitched aboard, with a fractured leg and other injuries. The others
were smashed against the iron hull and disappeared.

For one tremulous moment the engines slowed. The ship commenced to veer
off into the path of the cyclone. Captain Ross set his teeth, and the
telegraph bell jangled "Full speed ahead."

"Poor Jackson!" he murmured. "One of my best men. I remember seeing his
wife, a pretty little woman, and two children coming to meet him last
homeward trip. They will be there again. Good God! That Lascar who was
saved has some one to await him in a Bombay village, I suppose."

The gale sang a mad requiem to its victims. The very surface was torn
from the sea. The ship drove relentlessly through sheets of spray that
caused the officers high up on the bridge to gasp for breath. They held
on by main force, though protected by strong canvas sheets bound to the
rails. The main deck was quite impassable. The promenade deck, even the
lofty spar deck, was scourged with the broken crests of waves that
tried with demoniac energy to smash in the starboard bow, for the
_Sirdar_ was cutting into the heart of the cyclone.

The captain fought his way to the charthouse. He wiped the salt water
from his eyes and looked anxiously at the barometer.

"Still falling!" he muttered. "I will keep on until seven o'clock and
then bear three points to the southward. By midnight we should be
behind it."

He struggled back into the outside fury. By comparison the sturdy