ps
of the sea. A sprinkling of the wave fell on my face, and it was so
cold that it stung as boiling water stings. The dead and most
untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the
submarine volcano--the chill still water that kills all life and
smells of desolation and emptiness. We did not need either the
blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us
unhappy--we were shivering with cold and wretchedness where we stood.

'The hot air on the cold water makes this fog,' said the captain; 'it
ought to clear in a little time.'

'Whistle, oh! whistle, and let's get out of it,' said Keller.

The captain whistled again, and far and far astern the invisible twin
steam-sirens answered us. Their blasting shriek grew louder, till at
last it seemed to tear out of the fog just above our quarter, and I
cowered while the _Rathmines_ plunged bows under on a double swell
that crossed.

'No more,' said Frithiof, 'it is not good any more. Let us get away,
in the name of God.'

'Now if a torpedo-boat with a _City of Paris_ siren went mad and
broke her moorings and hired a friend to help her, it's just
conceivable that we might be carried as we are now. Otherwise this
thing is----'

The last words died on Keller's lips, his eyes began to start from
his head, and his jaw fell. Some six or seven feet above the port
bulwarks, framed in fog, and as utterly unsupported as the full moon,
hung a Face. It was not human, and it certainly was not animal, for
it did not belong to this earth as known to man. The mouth was open,
revealing a ridiculously tiny tongue--as absurd as the tongue of an
elephant; there were tense wrinkles of white skin at the angles of
the drawn lips, white feelers like those of a barbel sprung from the
lower jaw, and there was no sign of teeth within the mouth. But the
horror of the face lay in the eyes, for those were sightless--white,
in sockets as white as scraped bone, and blind. Yet for all this the
face, wrinkled as the mask of a lion is drawn in Assyrian sculpture,
was alive with rage and terror. One long white feeler touched our
bulwarks. Then the face disappeared with the swiftness of a blindworm
popping into its burrow, and the next thing that I remember is my own
voice in my own ears, saying gravely to the mainmast, 'But the
air-bladder ought to have been forced out of its mouth, you know.'

Keller came up to me, ashy white. He put his hand into his pocket,
took a cigar, bi