Yet the true one was very simple, and as soon as Brierly suggested it the court ceased to bother about the question.

If you remember, the ship had been stopped, and was lying with her head on the course steered through the night, with her stern canted high and her bows brought low down in the water through the filling of the fore-compartment.

Being thus out of trim, when the squall struck her a little on the quarter, she swung head to wind as sharply as though she had been at anchor.

By this change in her position all her lights were in a very few moments shut off from the boat to leeward.

It may very well be that, had they been seen, they would have had the effect of a mute appeal--that their glimmer lost in the darkness of the cloud would have had the mysterious power of the human glance that can awaken the feelings of remorse and pity.