it was laconic, turned on the electric light.
Frederick jumped to a sitting posture, and was annoyed by the water from
the leaky pipe, which ran now from one side of the room to the other, as
the vessel lurched. At first he was uncertain whether the word he had
heard had really been pronounced, or whether it was an illusion of his
unstrung nerves. Every night he had been torn with a jerk of his nerves
from his restless dozing, only to find that the cause had been a delusive
fall or a delusive cry. But now, when he distinctly heard the stewards
rapping at the other cabin doors, heard the doors open, and heard the
word, "Danger," repeated several times, a sensation came over him that
produced a most remarkable change in his condition.

"Very well," he said softly; and, as if he had been summoned to a game
that did not concern him, he carefully put on his heavy overcoat, and
stepped out into the gangway.

Here there was not a soul.

"Very well," he had been thinking, "the invisible powers, whose
playthings we human beings are, will now completely expose their supreme
brutality."

He had not been awakened from sleep; he had been awakened and brought to
his sober reason from beneath a hundred strata of dreams and sleep. Now,
in that empty corridor, it again seemed to him to be a fantastic illusion
of his disordered brain; and he was about to return to his cabin, when he
noticed for the first time that the rhythm of the engines and the
churning of the screw were neither to be heard nor felt. Suddenly he
thought the great vessel was drifting in the ocean abandoned by
passengers and crew, and he alone had been left behind from the general
rescue. But a passenger in a silk dressing-gown reeled by, whom Frederick
could question.

"What's the matter, do you know?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," said the man. "I've only been looking for my steward. I'm
thirsty. I want a glass of lemonade." He staggered past Frederick into
his cabin.

"Ass!" Frederick mentally exclaimed, disgusted with himself for what
he again believed was his illusion. Yet the silence weighed upon him
dreadfully. Seized by a wild instinct, he could not help but suddenly
rush forward, merely to be on deck.

Somebody came toward him from the opposite direction, and asked him where
he was going.

"Get out of my way," said Frederick. "It's none of your business."

But the hideous, half-dressed, corpse-like creature, besmirched by the
traces of seasickness, wo