that the figure at the wheel was bending over his work to keep his view of the compass. The slow grind of the half-speed engines and the swirl of displaced water was in itself sound enough to render almost unbearable the overpowering feeling

of silence.

Suddenly a great flood of light cleft the darkness ahead. It was so white and clear that the faces of the three men on the bridge looked pale and death-like. The man at the wheel winced with the stroke -it was literally a stroke of light; but the officer only moved his hand. The enemy had defeated their own ends; they had shown him the passage-half a point to starboard and the course was true. There stood the white stones of the lighthouse which for weeks had surrendered its functions to port-bound mariners.

For the space of perhaps fifteen seconds the great white eye penetrating the darkness was fixed full upon the boat. It

winked irresolutely, flashed upwards, then down again, away to starboard, until the elliptical base of the fearsome cone of light was well abeam. Then back it came and glared savagely full upon the steamer, silently closing down upon it. It looked long and steadfastly, and, as suddenly as it had come, it was cut off. All was dark and dreadful again. But only for a second. A long meteor-like rocket shot up from the centre of the great overpowering mass ahead. Its sinuous course closed in a mass of sparks. It was as if the torch had been applied to the pièce de résistance of some great firework display. In a moment what was darkness became a semicircle of scintillating light. The great beam of the Golden Hill searchlight leapt into life. It was supported by a score of lesser searchlights from the foremasts of the ships in harbour. But there were other lightslightning flashes from the breast of the mountain, which at intervals the acute

beams of the searchlights revealed-flashes which seared the gloom and vanished. Within a moment's space after this blaze of light came the ominous rattle which discovered its origin. The forts of Port Arthur were firing the guns which at night are always trained upon the harbour approaches. The tumult was deafening. The great bare flanks of the mountains behind caught up the deadly roll of discharging quick-firers, and flung the sound back in mocking reverberation. But that was not the worst sound. The hissing rush of projectiles, the ear - splitting swish as they struck the water and exploded, or shrieked in ricochet overhead in a moment the tension bred of apprehensive darkness had changed to an inferno of modern war.

The man at the wheel bent his head forward with the impulse of a man meeting a storm. But the officer never moved aught but his directing hand. The ever appearing and disappearing arc of the

"The forts of Port Arthur were firing the guns which at night are always trained upon the harbour approaches."