acing by this time. There was nothing in the world to
see--only the fog, which had turned, within the last minute, to dusk;
and nothing to feel except that we were racing down between the walls
of it like a stick caught in a mill heat. Worse it was; we were driving
down full tilt with a five-knot tide under us. If we struck there was
one consolation; the end would come soon. As 'John Peel' ended we could
hear the tide race take up the tune and hum it on the wind of our
passage; and above it I heard the third officer call out that he had
glimpsed a light astern.

"'The Monk!' said Madame, nodding her head to me to help her in easing
off the wheel.

"And I don't know, sir, if you have ever been through a gale at sea; a
really tight gale, I mean; with a while in it--maybe an hour only,
maybe twenty-four--when the odds are slowly turning against you. Then
there comes a point when, with nothing to show for it, you feel that
you are holding your own; and another point when you feel that, bar
accidents, the worst is over. The sea seems to break just as savage as
ever, and you can't swear that the wind has lessened. You have nothing
to point to, but, all the same, you know, and can thank the Lord.

"That's how it was with the _Milo_. I couldn't say when the danger
ceased; but I found myself looking at Madame across the binnacle lamp
and she was looking at me. My hand went out and I rang down for
half-speed, then for dead slow. We stood there and listened while the
engines changed their beat from one to the other. In the saloon they
had started a comic song with a chorus. Said she, after a bit, 'You can
bring up now and wait for morning. North of the Gunnel here there's an
eddy slack where the tides meet, and you may count on thirty fathoms.'

"I called down to know what the lead reported. I felt my voice shaking
and the leadsman's voice shook a bit too as he called back that he had
found the bottom with the red seventeen fathom mark. Half a minute
later he sang out that his line had lost it. I was just about calling
to let go anchor when away on our starboard bow we heard the pilots
hailing. We sent up a flare, and at sight of it the lighthousemen, away
on the Monk, began banging, and small blame to them!"

CHAPTER X

THE ADVENTURES OF FOUR SHILLINGS

As he finished his story Captain Whitaker stood up and reached out a
hand to open a glass-fronted cupboard in which he kept his books and
papers. The Commandant, m