We have made eight thousand feet since we pithed the tramp and
our turbines are giving us an honest two hundred and ten knots.
Very far to the west an elongated blur of red, low down, shows us
the North Banks Mark Boat. There are specks of fire round her
rising and falling--bewildered planets about an unstable
sun--helpless shipping hanging on to her light for company's
sake. No wonder she could not quit station.
She warns us to look out for the back-wash of the bad vortex in
which (her beam shows it) she is even now reeling.
The pits of gloom about us begin to fill with very faintly
luminous films--wreathing and uneasy shapes. One forms itself
into a globe of pale flame that waits shivering with eagerness
till we sweep by. It leaps monstrously across the blackness,
alights on the precise tip of our nose, pirouettes there an
instant, and swings off. Our roaring bow sinks as though that
light were lead--sinks and recovers to lurch and stumble again
beneath the next blow-out. Tim's fingers on the lift-shunt strike
chords of numbers--1:4:7:--2:4:6:--7:5:3, and so on; for he is
running by his tanks only, lifting or lowering her against the
uneasy air.
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