r, shivering. 'But hadn't you better
attend to the fog-horn? It seems to me that I heard something.'

'Heard! Good heavens!' said the captain from the bridge, 'I should
think you did.' He pulled the string of our fog-horn, which was a
weak one. It sputtered and choked, because the stoke-hold was full of
water and the fires were half drowned, and at last gave out a moan.
It was answered from the fog by one of the most appalling steam
sirens I have ever heard. Keller turned as white as I did, for the
fog, the cold fog, was upon us, and any man may be forgiven for
fearing a death he cannot see.

'Give her steam there!' said the captain to the engine-room. 'Steam
for the whistle, if we have to go dead slow.'

We bellowed again, and the damp dripped off the awnings on to the
deck as we listened for the reply. It seemed to be astern this time,
but much nearer than before.

'The _Pembroke Castle_ on us!' said Keller; and then, viciously,
'Well, thank God, we shall sink her too.'

'It's a side-wheel steamer,' I whispered. 'Can't you hear the
paddles?'

This time we whistled and roared till the steam gave out, and the
answer nearly deafened us. There was a sound of frantic threshing in
the water, apparently about fifty yards away, and something shot past
in the whiteness that looked as though it were gray and red.

'The _Pembroke Castle_ bottom up,' said Keller, who, being a
journalist, always sought for explanations. 'That's the colours of a
Castle liner. We're in for a big thing.'

'The sea is bewitched,' said Frithiof from the wheel-house. 'There
are _two_ steamers!'

Another siren sounded on our bow, and the little steamer rolled in
the wash of something that had passed unseen.

'We're evidently in the middle of a fleet,' said Keller quietly. 'If
one doesn't run us down, the other will. Phew! What in creation is
that?'

I sniffed, for there was a poisonous rank smell in the cold air--a
smell that I had smelt before.

'If I was on land I should say that it was an alligator. It smells
like musk,' I answered.

'Not ten thousand alligators could make that smell' said Zuyland; 'I
have smelt them.'

'Bewitched! Bewitched!' said Frithiof. 'The sea she is turned upside
down, and we are walking along the bottom.'

Again the _Rathmines_ rolled in the wash of some unseen ship, and a
silver-gray wave broke over the bow, leaving on the deck a sheet of
sediment--the gray broth that has its place in the fathomless dee