is had ceased. The car hung here, like a floating
balloon, motionless, purposeless--far up out of sight of land,
and an absolute silence hung round it.

He moved a little as these things began to arrange themselves in
his mind, and at the movement the Cardinal turned round. He
looked old and worn in this chilly light, and his unshaven chin
sparkled like frost. But he spoke in his ordinary voice, without
any sign of discomposure.

"So you are awake, Monsignor? I thought I would let you have
your sleep out."

"What has happened? Where are we?"

"We arrived half an hour ago. They signalled to us to remain
where we were until they came up."

"We have arrived!"

"Certainly. We passed the first Berlin signalling light
nearly three-quarters of an hour ago. We slowed down after
that, of course."

The priest turned his head suddenly and made a movement with it
downwards. The Cardinal leaned forward again and peered through
the open shutter.

"I think they are coming up at last," he said, drawing his head
back. "Hush! Listen, Monsignor."

The priest listened with all his might. At first he heard nothing
except the faint whistle of the wind somewhere in the roof. Then
he heard three or four metallic noises, as if from the depths of
a bottomless hit, faint and minute; and then, quite distinctly,
three strokes of a bell.

The Cardinal nodded.

"They are starting," he said. "They have kept us long enough."

He slipped along the seat to where his scarlet cincture and cap
lay, and began to put these on.

Monsignor sprang across and lifted down the great Roman
cloak from its peg.

"You had better get ready yourself," said the Cardinal. "They
will be here in a moment."

As the priest slipped on his second shoe, a sound suddenly
stopped him dead for an instant. It was the sound of voices
talking somewhere beneath in the fog. Then he finished, and stood
up, just as there slid cautiously upwards, like a whale coming up
to breathe, past the window by which the Cardinal was now
standing cloaked and hatted, first a shining roof, then a row of
little ventilators, and finally a line of windows against which a
dozen faces were pressed. He saw them begin to stir as the
scarlet of the Cardinal met their eyes.

"We can sit down again," said the old man, smiling. "The rest is
a matter for the engineers."

It seemed strange afterwards to the priest how little real or
active terror he felt. He was conscious of a certain sickl