e dawn on the second day that they came in
sight of the American coast.

Monsignor woke early that morning, and after lying and listening
for half an hour or so to the strange little sounds with which
the air was full--the steady rush of wind like a long hush; the
shivering of some tiny loose scale in one of the planes outside
his window; a minute inexplicable tapping beneath the floor of
his cabin--all those sounds so unidentifiable by the amateur, and
yet so suggestive--he got up, dressed, and went across to the
oratory, where he had said Mass on the previous morning, to say
his prayers. When he had finished he came out again, went
upstairs, and along to the end of the ship, whence from a
protected angle he could look straight ahead. The lights were all
on, as the sun was not yet up, and the upper deck, except for a
patrolling officer, was entirely empty.

For a while he could make out little or nothing beyond the
jutting prow beneath him, itself also illuminated, and various
outlines and silhouettes of devices and rigging which even now he
did not properly understand. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed to
the dark, he began to see.

Beneath him flitted a corrugated leaden surface, flecked
occasionally with white, which he knew to be water, eight hundred
feet at least below, and once he caught a glimpse of a
flattened-looking, fish-shaped object, which went again in an
instant, lighted interiorly, which he guessed to be a coasting
steamer. Before him nothing at first was visible except an
enormous gulf of gloom, but presently, as the dawn came on
behind, this gulf became tinged with a very faint rosy colour in
its upper half, enabling him to distinguish sea from sky, and
almost immediately afterwards the sea itself turned to a livid
pale tinge under the glowing light.

The next thing that he noticed was that the edge of the sea against
the sky began to look irregular and blotted, a little lumpy here
and there, and as he looked this lumpiness grew and rose higher.

He turned as the step of the officer sounded close to him.

"That's land, I suppose?" he said.

"Yes, father; we shall be in by half-past five. . . . Beg your
pardon, father, are you staying long?"

Monsignor shook his head.

"That depends on a hundred things," he said.

"Curious idea this colony; but I dare say it's best."

Monsignor smiled and said nothing.

* * * * *

Interiorly his heart had been sinking steadily during the