few feet across; but to leap through that living fire was to leap
into eternity. I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed
me, I may truly say, than because my common sense did not.

Some were watching me, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!"
they screamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in
token that I heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did
their bidding I noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler
eyes: the wind was not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed
ship was rolling in a dead calm.

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared
to move an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the
scorched bulwarks burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up,
desperate with the pain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide
to balance me, I walked those few yards, between rising sea and
falling fire, and falling sea and rising fire, as an acrobat walks
a rope, and by God's grace without mishap.

There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about
anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more
pregnant than the last. And yet I did think that those who had
encouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed
me alive among them; they were looking at something else already;
and this was what it was.

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had
a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw
him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette.
Harris appeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for