e,
which grew larger. It was approaching, and he dispassionately viewed it;
and when he looked again for the two, they were gone, and in their
places were two clouds of nebula, which resolved into myriad points of
sparkling light and color--whirling, encroaching, until they filled all
space. And through them the larger light was coming--and growing
larger--straight for him.

He heard a rushing sound, and looking for it, saw in the opposite
direction a formless object, as much darker than the gray of the void as
the flame was brighter, and it too was growing larger, and coming. And
it seemed to him that this light and darkness were the good and evil of
his life, and he watched, to see which would reach him first, but felt
no surprise or regret when he saw that the darkness was nearest. It
came, closer and closer, until it brushed him on the side.

"What have we here, Rowland?" said a voice. Instantly, the whirling
points were blotted out; the universe of gray changed to the fog; the
flame of light to the moon rising above it, and the shapeless darkness
to the form of the first officer. The little white figure, which had
just darted past the three watchers, stood at his feet. As though warned
by an inner subconsciousness of danger, it had come in its sleep, for
safety and care, to its mother's old lover--the strong and the weak--the
degraded and disgraced, but exalted--the persecuted, drugged, and all
but helpless John Rowland.

With the readiness with which a man who dozes while standing will answer
the question that wakens him, he said--though he stammered from the now
waning effect of the drug: "Myra's child, sir; it's asleep." He picked
up the night-gowned little girl, who screamed as she wakened, and folded
his pea-jacket around the cold little body.

"Who is Myra?" asked the officer in a bullying tone, in which were also
chagrin and disappointment. "You've been asleep yourself."

Before Rowland could reply a shout from the crow's-nest split the air.

"Ice," yelled the lookout; "ice ahead. Iceberg. Right under the bows."
The first officer ran amidships, and the captain, who had remained
there, sprang to the engine-room telegraph, and this time the lever was
turned. But in five seconds the bow of the _Titan_ began to lift, and
ahead, and on either hand, could be seen, through the fog, a field of
ice, which arose in an incline to a hundred feet high in her track. The
music in the theater ceased, and among the bab