you think they will do with us?" pursued Mr. Spokesly.

"I don't know, Mister Mate. There's always plenty o' work everywhere,"
was the equable reply.

"Is that all you think of?"

"I got a big family in Cospicua," said the engineer, standing up. "I
can't afford to be out of a job. I think I'll go and eat, Mister Mate.
Perhaps the fog will lift a bit and we can see what the course is."

They went out and climbed the ladder to the bridge-deck, and stood
staring into the damp, palpable darkness. The absence of all artificial
light, the silence, the tangible vapour concealing the surface of the
sea, and possibly, too, the over-hanging uncertainty of their
destination, combined to fill them with a vague dull sense of impending
peril. They were on the starboard side, abaft the lifeboat. They could
not see the bridge clearly, and the forecastle was swallowed up in the
blank opacity of the mist. It was a situation in which both care and
recklessness were of equal futility. The imagination balked and turned
back on itself before the contemplation of such limitless possibilities.
And it was while they were standing there in taciturn apprehension that
they suddenly sprang into an extraordinary animation of mind and body at
the sound and vibration of a loud crash forward. The _Kalkis_ heeled
over to port from the pressure of some invisible weight and Mr. Spokesly
started to run towards the bridge.

"They're shellin' her!" he bawled. "Stand by! Look out! What's that?"

He stood still for a moment, his hands raised to balance himself against
the returning roll of the ship as she recovered. And in that moment, out
of the fog, above him and over the rail, came an immense gray vertical
wall of sharp steel rushing up to him and past into oblivion with a
grinding splintering roar. There were cries, the dim glow of an opened
door high up, the sough of pouring waters in the darkness, a shadowy
phantom and a swirl of propellers, and she was gone.

And there was an absolute silence on the _Kalkis_ more dreadful to Mr.
Spokesly than the panic of the mob of Asiatics on the _Tanganyika_. He
tried to think. Mr. Cassar had disappeared. They had been in collision
with a man-of-war, he felt certain of that. There was no mistaking the
high cleaving flare of those gray bows as they fled past. And she must
have struck the _Kalkis_ forward as well as amidships. A glancing blow.
Yet there was silence. He strode forward and climbed the ladder to th