descent that was full of the menace of a
tardy abatement. Fortunately, the horizon lay well open; one could see
some miles, and the steamer was washing along at her old pace--a full
thirteen, with a nearly becalmed collier, ragged, wet and staggering,
all patches and bentinck-boom, dissolving rapidly into the weather over
the starboard quarter. Captain Verrion, in streaming oilskins,
catching sight of my head, came aft to inquire if I had slept
comfortably. We then talked of the weather.

"One may know the English Channel ain't fur off, sir," said he, with a
grin, as he looked up at the sky.

"Ay," said I, "and how would it be with us if we depended upon sails?
There is better music to me in the noise of your engine-room than in
the finest performance of the first opera orchestra in the world."

He respectfully assented; and to kill the time as I stood under
shelter, I asked a few questions about the earl and countess, related
our adventures, taking care, however, to let him suppose that we were a
young married couple out on a yachting honeymoon--not that I said this;
I allowed him to infer it; spoke of the chances of the _Spitfire_, and
then seeing Grace at the foot of the ladder, joined her, and presently
we were at breakfast.

It rained incessantly, but, happily, the wind remained small, and we
travelled along as quietly in that three hundred and fifty ton yacht as
though we reposed in the saloon of an Atlantic giantess. A number of
volumes filled the shelves of a sumptuous bookcase; I took the liberty
of seeking for a book for Grace, and found that the collection
consisted almost entirely of novels. His lordship was as wise in his
choice of literature for sea-going purposes as in his taste for
spring-mattresses, for what but a novel in a yacht's cabin on a wet day
can fix the attention?

It was some time after three o'clock in the afternoon, that on a sudden
the engines were "slowed down," as I believe the term is, and a minute
later the revolutions of the propeller ceased. There is always
something startling in the abrupt cessation of the pulsing of the screw
in a steamer at sea. One gets so used to the noise of the engines, to
the vibrating sensation communicated in a sort of tingling throughout
the frame of the vessel by the thrashing blades, that the suspension of
the familiar sound falls like a loud and fearful hush upon the ear.
Grace, who had been dozing, opened her eyes.

"What can the matter