the captain, and said he must be at Constantinople that
evening.

"Well," said the captain to the interpreter, "tell your master that if
the Sultan and all his concubines were to ask me to go ahead I would
have to refuse."

Then he proceeded to point out the dangers on the chart. This did not
appeal to the pasha's military understanding. What he wanted was to be
landed somewhere, and he did not regard running the vessel ashore with
any disastrous consequences to himself until he was assured that the
rocks were so steep that even in a calm the vessel might sink in deep
water and everybody be drowned.

"Anyhow," said the captain, "I'm not going to try it on; so you must
inform your master of my definite decision. He cannot be more anxious
than I am. I've scarcely closed my eyes since we left, and if this
continues I must face another night of it."

He then went on to the bridge, and had only been there about half an
hour when his persistent passenger approached him beseechingly,
stating that the pasha would give a hundred pounds if he was landed
that night.

"I would not attempt such a thing for twenty hundred," said the
captain.

"Will nothing tempt you, then, to run a risk?" asked the interpreter.

"Nothing but the clearing away of the fog," replied the commander.

He then commenced to walk the bridge, and pondered over the experience
he was having, wrestling with himself as to the amount of risk he
should run. He called the second officer to him, and gave him orders
to go aloft to the foretopgallant mast-head and see if he could make
anything out. The officer was in the act of jumping into the rigging
when a Turkish schooner sailed close alongside and was soon out of
sight. The captain knew then that he was in the vicinity of the
entrance, and set the engines easy ahead. The second mate, after being
at the mast-head about ten minutes, shouted--

"I see over the top of the fog a lighthouse or tower on the port bow.
I can see no land."

When he was asked if he could see anything on the starboard bow, his
answer came in the negative. The captain, fearing lest he might be
steering into the false Bosphorus, which is a treacherous deep bight
that has been the death-trap of many a ship's crew, gave orders to
stop her while he ran aloft to verify the officer's report and scan
over the mist for some landmark to guide him in navigating in the
right direction. He had only been a few minutes at the mast-head when
he