sk of cutting through the deck.
The smoke was by this time pouring in volumes up the companion and
through the skylight. Lance had been too busy to take much notice of
this whilst engaged in passing the buckets; but now that a respite came
he had time to look about him. He saw the great dun cloud of smoke
surging out of the companion and streaming away to leeward; and he saw
indistinctly through it at intervals a small group gathered together aft
by the weather taffrail. He thought he would join this group for a
moment, if only to ascertain whether the girls had succeeded in securing
such things as they were most anxious to save; and he sauntered toward
them in his usual easy and deliberate manner. As he drew near Violet
rose and said--

"Oh, Mr Evelin! I am _so_ glad you are come; I was beginning to feel
quite anxious about Blanche--but where is she; I do not see her with
you?"

"She is _not_ with me, Miss Dudley," answered Lance; "what led you to
suppose she would be?"

"Not with you! Oh, Mr Evelin, _where_ is she, then? If she is not
with you she must still be in her cabin. I stayed there until the smoke
was too thick to see or breathe any longer, and then I came on deck. I
spoke to her, urging her to come also, and receiving no reply thought
she had left without my noticing it; but she is not here anywhere."

The latter part of this speech never reached Lance's ears, for, upon
fully realising that Blanche--"his own sweet darling," as he had called
her in his inmost thoughts a thousand times--was missing, he darted to
the companion-way and plunged down the stairs, three or four at a time,
into the blinding pungent suffocating smoke which rushed momentarily in
more and more dense volumes up through the opening.

On reaching the foot of the staircase, he found that several of the
planks had been pulled up to allow the men tending the hose to get below
the saloon floor and approach as near as possible to the seat of the
fire. So dense was the smoke just here that it was only by the merest
chance he escaped falling headlong into the abyss. Catching sight,
however, of the aperture just in time to spring across it, he did so;
and glancing back for an instant on reaching the other side, he saw a
broad expanse of glowing white-hot bales of wool, and, dimly through the
acrid smoke and steam, the forms of the men who were plying the engine
hose.

Groping his way into the saloon, which was by this time so full