r of society,
something of the kind would have happened; but being of no earthly good
to himself or anybody else, it didn't."

"Quite so. Two hundred, less five, I think you said. Crowded up too,
fore and aft, with passengers. What would happen if we came to sudden
and unexpected smash? In the matter of the boats I mean."

"What sort of croaking vein are you in, Musgrave? Well, in such a case
it would be a mortal tight fit, I don't mind telling _you_. We fulfil
all the requirements of the Board of Trade in the matter of boat
carrying, but if we have a couple of hundred damned soldiers crammed on
board at the last moment, what are we to do? Why, just drive ahead and
trust to luck; and that's what brings us through far oftener than you
landsmen ever dream."

The talk veered round to other topics, and presently one of the
quartermasters came in to report that the weather was thickening into a
regular fogbank.

"I'll go up on the bridge a bit, Musgrave," said the captain. "It isn't
often we get fogs so near the Line. But the weather has been beastly
this voyage, as hot and steamy as I've ever known it; and there are a
lot of waterspouts about too."

They bade each other good-night, and already as Roden left the cabin,
the more measured throb of the propeller told that the vessel had slowed
down to half-speed. Then the hoarse, rasping screech of the foghorn
rent the night as the ship drove slowly through the smother, whose
steamy folds blotted out the stars. Again and again the voice of the
foghorn was lifted, uttering its hideous, vibrating whoop--causing the
sleeping passengers below to start up wide awake in confused doubt as to
whether the end of the world had come, and a hazy uncertainty as to
whether they themselves were just arriving at Waterloo station or at the
Judgment Seat. There was one, however, whom the unendurably distracting
sound did not awaken; who slept on--heavily, tranquilly, dreamlessly.

Roden, though intending to go below, still remained on deck, held by a
kind of fascination, as the ship glided slowly through the silent fleecy
smother. Then again the jarring blast of the foghorn rolled out, and--
on Heaven! Was it an echo--louder, more appalling than the sound
itself? For, as he gazed, there leaped forth something out of the mist.
In that rapidly flashing moment of time was photographed upon his brain
a massive hull, the loom of a huge funnel, a towering cut-water--a human
figur