Instinctively snatching at the box, Monk succeeded
only in dragging it to the edge of the desk before a second shock,
accompanied by a grinding crash of steel and timbers, seemed to make
the yacht leap like a live thing stricken mortally. She heeled heavily
to starboard, the despatch-box went to the floor with a thump lost in
the greater din, Liane Delorme was propelled headlong into a corner,
Monk thrown to his knees, Phinuit lifted out of his chair and flung
sprawling into the arms of Lanyard, who, pinned down by the other's
weight in his own chair, felt this last slide backwards to starboard
and bring up against a partition with a bang that drove the breath out
of him in one enormous gust.
He retained, however, sufficient presence of mind neatly to disarm
Phinuit before that one guessed what he was about.
After that second blow, the Sybarite remained at a standstill, but the
continued beating of her engines caused her to quiver painfully from
trucks to keelson, as if in agonies of death such as those which had
marked the end of Popinot. Of a sudden the engines ceased, and there
was no more movement of any sort, only an appalling repose with silence
more dreadful still.
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