lively curiosity as to his business, his antecedents, and, in short,
everything about him. Well, Mr Leslie, let me say at once that I am
profoundly grateful to you for your promise to help me so far as you
can. At the same time, I must confess that at present I quite fail to
see in what way you can possibly be of the slightest assistance to me,
excepting, of course, that your presence and companionship are a great
comfort and encouragement to me. It would be awful beyond words to find
one's self quite alone in such a frightful situation as this. By the
way, do you think it likely that any others besides ourselves have
survived this horrible accident--if accident it was?"

"Oh," answered Leslie, "there is no doubt as to its being an accident.
But it was one of those accidents that might have been avoided.
Rainhill was not to blame; he observed every possible precaution; the
fault lay with the other fellow, who came blundering along through that
dense fog at full speed. I take it he approached us so rapidly that he
failed to hear our fog-horn until it was too late to avoid us. He
ought, under the circumstances, to have been steaming dead slow. Then,
upon hearing our fog-horn, he could at once have stopped his engines,
and, if necessary, reversed them, until the danger of collision was
past. As it is, it is quite upon the cards that he, too, has gone to
the bottom. No ship could strike so terrific a blow as that steamer did
without suffering serious damage herself. As to the probability of
there being other survivors than ourselves, I doubt it. It is
absolutely certain that nobody could possibly have escaped in either of
the boats; and, watching the mad fight for them, at a distance, as I
did, I imagine that when the ship went down, every one of those frantic
people went under in the grasp of somebody else, and so lost, in another
person's death-grip, whatever chance he might otherwise have had of
coming to the surface. It is a marvel to me how _you_ escaped. Where
were you when the ship plunged?"

"I? Oh, I was down on what they called the `main deck,'" answered Miss
Trevor. "I heard the captain give orders that every one was to don
their warmest clothing, so I slipped into my cabin and changed my
evening frock for a good stout serge that I wore when I first came on
board; and when I emerged from the saloon I found myself quite alone. I
was just about to climb up on the poop when the ship seemed to slide