t would not have caused me a pang
to learn she had gone to the bottom."

"Well, sir, we'll head for Mount's Bay then. It will be a saving of
some few hours of sea anyway for the lady," and with that he trudged
forward.

From the shelter of the companion hatch we could just catch a view over
the steamer's taffrail of the _Spitfire_ as she came sliding after us
to the pull of the tow-rope. With linked arms Grace and I stood
looking at her. The air was darkening to the descent of the evening
shadow, the rain poured continuously; but the wind was gone. The sea
undulated in an oil-like surface, and the rain as it fell pitted the
water with black points, as of ink. The melancholy of the scene was
unspeakably heightened by that detail of mutilated, dismasted yacht
astern, and by the tragic significance she gathered for us as we stood
looking, recalling the night of the elopement, our stealthy floating
out of Boulogne harbour, the gale that had nearly foundered us, and our
escape that might well seem miraculous to our land-going eyes as we
noticed her littleness and her present helplessness, and remembered the
height of the seas which ran, and the hurricane weight of storm which
she had survived.

We killed the evening with books and talk, and the minutes fled with
the velocity of the flight of birds. Our sailor steward informed us
that Caudel and the boy had turned in after making a hearty supper and
were sleeping like dead men. I stood awhile in the companion to smoke
a pipe before going to bed; but at that hour the night was as black as
thunder, the wet hissed upon our decks as it fell; yet upon the white
waters of the steamer's wake the dim configuration of the little
_Spitfire_ was visible, with her weak side-lights of red and green
dimly glimmering over the pale, faint stream of froth that rushed from
the _Mermaid's_ counter to the dandy's sides.

It was possibly the thoughts and memories induced by the obscure and
melancholy vision of the little fabric in our wake that rendered me
nervous. I thought to myself--here we are steaming at ten or twelve
knots an hour through a thick, coal-black night; suppose we should
plunge into some wooden or metal side? Some such apprehensions as
this, not quite idle nor unmanly either, dismissed me to my cabin with
a resolution to lie down fully clothed, and for three hours I lay wide
awake, listening to the restless grinding of the engines and to the
sounds of water flowing