ath--he always smelled of tobacco--and I gave him up. It was then
that he--that he broke out."

"Come out and show me this reprobate," said the husband, rising. They
went to the door and the young woman peered out. "He is the last man
down there--close to the cabin," she said as she drew in. The husband
stepped out.

"What! that hang-dog ruffian, scouring the ventilator? So, that's
Rowland, of the navy, is it! Well, this is a tumble. Wasn't he broken
for conduct unbecoming an officer? Got roaring drunk at the President's
levee, didn't he? I think I read of it."

"I know he lost his position and was terribly disgraced," answered the
wife.

"Well, Myra, the poor devil is harmless now. We'll be across in a few
days, and you needn't meet him on this broad deck. If he hasn't lost all
sensibility, he's as embarrassed as you. Better stay in now--it's
getting foggy."

CHAPTER III

When the watch turned out at midnight, they found a vicious half-gale
blowing from the northeast, which, added to the speed of the steamship,
made, so far as effects on her deck went, a fairly uncomfortable whole
gale of chilly wind. The head sea, choppy as compared with her great
length, dealt the _Titan_ successive blows, each one attended by
supplementary tremors to the continuous vibrations of the engines--each
one sending a cloud of thick spray aloft that reached the crow's-nest on
the foremast and battered the pilot-house windows on the bridge in a
liquid bombardment that would have broken ordinary glass. A fog-bank,
into which the ship had plunged in the afternoon, still enveloped
her--damp and impenetrable; and into the gray, ever-receding wall ahead,
with two deck officers and three lookouts straining sight and hearing to
the utmost, the great racer was charging with undiminished speed.

At a quarter past twelve, two men crawled in from the darkness at the
ends of the eighty-foot bridge and shouted to the first officer, who had
just taken the deck, the names of the men who had relieved them. Backing
up to the pilot-house, the officer repeated the names to a quartermaster
within, who entered them in the log-book. Then the men vanished--to
their coffee and "watch-below." In a few moments another dripping shape
appeared on the bridge and reported the crow's-nest relief.

"Rowland, you say?" bawled the officer above the howling of the wind.
"Is he the man who was lifted aboard, drunk, yesterday?"

"Yes, sir."

"Is he still drunk?"