unker struggled, with all
the skilled weapons of seamanship, against his invincible foe; wrapped
in the impenetrable fog, the ship moved ghost-like to what seemed to be
her doom.

The anxiety of the officers had not as yet communicated itself to the
passengers; those who had been most nervous in the ordinary onset of
wind and wave looked upon the fog as a phenomenon whose only disturbance
might be delay. To Miss Keene this conveyed no annoyance; rather that
placid envelopment of cloud soothed her fancy; she submitted herself to
its soft embraces, and to the mysterious onward movement of the ship,
as if it were part of a youthful dream. Once she thought of the ship
of Sindbad, and that fatal loadstone mountain, with an awe that was,
however, half a pleasure.

"You are not frightened, Miss Keene?" said a voice near her.

She started slightly. It was the voice of Mr. Hurlstone. So thick was
the fog that his face and figure appeared to come dimly out of it, like
a part of her dreaming fancy. Without replying to his question, she said
quickly,--

"You are better then, Mr. Hurlstone? We--we were all so frightened for
you."

An angry shadow crossed his thin face, and he hesitated. After a pause
he recovered himself, and said,--

"I was saying you were taking all this very quietly. I don't think
there's much danger myself. And if we should go ashore here"--

"Well?" suggested Miss Keene, ignoring this first intimation of danger
in her surprise at the man's manner.

"Well, we should all be separated only a few days earlier, that's all!"

More frightened at the strange bitterness of his voice than by the
sense of physical peril, she was vaguely moving away towards the dimly
outlined figures of her companions when she was arrested by a voice
forward. There was a slight murmur among the passengers.

"What did he say?" asked Miss Keene, "What are 'Breakers ahead'?"

Hurlstone did not reply.

"Where away?" asked a second voice.

The murmur still continuing, Captain Bunker's hoarse voice pierced the
gloom,--"Silence fore and aft!"

The first voice repeated faintly,--

"On the larboard bow."

There was another silence. Again the voice repeated, as if
mechanically,--

"Breakers!"

"Where away?"

"On the starboard beam."

"We are in some passage or channel," said Hurlstone quietly.

The young girl glanced round her and saw for the first time that, in
one of those inexplicable movements she had not understood,