uded, were below, dressing, a faint cry
arose from somewhere aft on the upper deck--a cry which was swiftly
taken up by other voices, so that presently a deck steward echoed it
immediately outside my own stateroom:

"Man overboard! Man overboard!"

All my premonitions rallying in that one sickening moment, I sprang
out on the deck, half dressed as I was, and leaping past the boat which
swung nearly opposite my door, craned over the rail, looking astern.

For a long time I could detect nothing unusual. The engine-room
telegraph was ringing--and the motion of the screws momentarily ceased;
then, in response to further ringing, recommenced, but so as to jar
the whole structure of the vessel; whereby I knew that the engines were
reversed. Peering intently into the wake of the ship, I was but dimly
aware of the ever growing turmoil around me, of the swift mustering of a
boat's crew, of the shouted orders of the third-officer. Suddenly I saw
it--the sight which was to haunt me for succeeding days and nights.

Half in the streak of the wake and half out of it, I perceived the
sleeve of a white jacket, and, near to it, a soft felt hat. The sleeve
rose up once into clear view, seemed to describe a half-circle in the
air then sink back again into the glassy swell of the water. Only the
hat remained floating upon the surface.

By the evidence of the white sleeve alone I might have remained
unconvinced, although upon the voyage I had become familiar enough with
the drill shooting-jacket, but the presence of the gray felt hat was
almost conclusive.

The man overboard was Nayland Smith!

I cannot hope, writing now, to convey in any words at my command, a
sense, even remote, of the utter loneliness which in that dreadful
moment closed coldly down upon me.

To spring overboard to the rescue was a natural impulse, but to have
obeyed it would have been worse than quixotic. In the first place, the
drowning man was close upon half a mile astern; in the second place,
others had seen the hat and the white coat as clearly as I; among them
the third-officer, standing upright in the stern of the boat--which,
with commendable promptitude had already been swung into the water. The
steamer was being put about, describing a wide arc around the little
boat dancing on the deep blue rollers....

Of the next hour, I cannot bear to write at all. Long as I had known
him, I was ignorant of my friend's powers as a swimmer, but I judged
that he m