d where he was going
to take us, were things I didn't dare to think about. The fog did not
prevent me from seeing the water about our stern, and I leaned over the
rail, watching the ripples that flowed on each side of the rudder,
which showed that we were still going at about the same uniform rate.

"But toward evening the gurgling beneath me ceased, and I could see
that the rudder no longer parted the quiet water, and that we had
ceased to move. A flash of hope blazed up within me. Had the
Water-devil found the ship too heavy a load, and had he given up the
attempt to drag it to its under-ocean cave? I went below and had my
supper; I was almost a happy man. When Miss Minturn came to ask me how
we were getting along, I told her that I thought we were doing very
well indeed. I did not mention that we had ceased to move, for she
thought that a favorable symptom. She went back to her quarters greatly
cheered up. Not so much, I think, from my words, as from my joyful
aspect; for I did feel jolly, there was no doubt about it. If that
Water-devil had let go of us, I was willing to take all the other
chances that might befall a ship floating about loose on the Bay of
Bengal.

"The fog was so thick that night that it was damp and unpleasant on
deck, and so, having hung out and lighted a couple of lanterns, I went
below for a comfortable smoke in the captain's room. I was puffing
away here at my ease, with my mind filled with happy thoughts of two or
three weeks with Miss Minturn on this floating paradise, where she was
bound to see a good deal of me, and couldn't help liking me better, and
depending on me more and more every day, when I felt a little jerking
shock. It was the same thing that we had felt before. The Water-devil
still had hold of us!

"I dropped my pipe, my chin fell upon my breast, I shivered all over.
In a few moments I heard the maid calling to me, and then she ran into
the room. 'Miss Minturn wants to know, sir,' she said, 'if you think
that shock is a sudden twist in the current which is carrying us on?' I
straightened myself up as well as I could, and in the dim light I do
not think she noticed my condition. I answered that I thought it was
something of that sort, and she went away.

"More likely, a twist of the Devil's arm, I thought, as I sat there
alone in my misery.

"In ten or fifteen minutes there came two shocks, not very far apart.
This showed that the creature beneath us was at work in som