s
he went down the ladder.

And the lamp showed him, in spite of the fog, what had happened. The
fore-deck was a mass of ripped and twisted plates, splintered doors, and
fragments of the interiors of cabins looked strangely small and tawdry
out on the harsh deck. A settee-cushion, all burst and impaled upon a
piece of angle iron, impeded him. "Won't be spoken to that fashion!" he
muttered, holding up the lamp and peering into the murk. "Good Lord! The
forecastle's carried away." He stumbled nearer. There was no ladder on
this side any more. The high sharp prow had struck a glancing blow just
abaft the anchor and sliced away the whole starboard side of the
forecastle. Standing where the door of the bosun's room had been, Mr.
Spokesly lowered his lamp and saw the black water rushing past between
the torn deck-beams. And Mr. Spokesly had it borne in upon him that not
only was Plouff vanished, but his cabin was gone. There was scarcely
anything of it left save some splintered parts of the settee and the
inner bulkhead, on which a gaudy calendar from a seaman's outfitter
fluttered in the night breeze against the blue-white paint.

Mr. Spokesly's heart was daunted by the desolation of that brutally
revealed interior. It daunted him because he could imagine, with painful
particularity, the scene in that little cabin a few moments before. He
had looked in at the door a day or two since, and seen Plouff, a large
calabash pipe like a cornucopia in his mouth, propped up in his
bed-place, reading a very large book with marbled covers which turned
out to be the bound volume of a thirty-year-old magazine picked up for a
few pence in some port. He could see him thus engaged a few moments ago.
Mr. Spokesly gave a sort of half-sob, half-giggle. "My God, he isn't
here at all! He's been carried away, cabin and bunk and everything.
Smashed and drowned. Well!"

He felt he couldn't stop there any more. It was worse than finding
Plouff's mangled body in the ruins. To have been wiped out like that
without a chance to explain a single word to any one was tragic for
Plouff. Mr. Spokesly gave a shout.

"Anybody down there?" There was no answer. He found himself wondering
what the captain's comment would be upon Plouff's sudden departure for
parts unknown. He tried to convince himself that there was no reason for
supposing him to be dead. He saw him sitting up in his bunk in the sea,
still clasping the large book and smoking the trumpet-shaped