of her propeller. When he returned it was
with a bottle in his hand and a second bottle under his arm.

"Cracked as a drum," he announced to the seaman Lloyd on his way back to
the bridge. "Says 'e's 'ad a revelation."

"A wot?"

"A revelation. Says 'e 'eard a voice from 'eaven las' night, tellin'
'im as Faith was dead in these times; that if a man only 'ad faith 'e
could let everything else rip . . . and," concluded the mate heavily,
resting his unoccupied hand on the ladder, "'e's down below tryin' it."

The seaman did not answer. The mate ascended again, and vanished in the
fog. After a pause a bell tinkled deep down in the bowels of the ship.
Her propeller began to churn the water, very slowly at first, then with
gathering speed, and the _Evan Evans_ forged ahead, shouldering her way
deeper and deeper into the fog.

It had certainly grown denser. There was not the slightest reason for
the children to hide. No one came near them; they could see nothing but
the wet and dirty deck, the cook's galley close by (in which, as it
happened, the cook lay in drunken slumber) and a boat swinging on davits
close above their heads, between them and the limitless grey. Bill had
disappeared some time before the skipper came aboard and was busy, no
doubt, in the engine-room. In the shrouded bows one of the crew was
working a fog-horn at irregular intervals, and for a while every blast
was answered by a hoot from the steam-whistle above the bridge.

This lasted three hours or more. Then, though the fog-horn continued
spasmodically, the whistle fell unaccountably silent. The children
scarcely noted this; they were occupied with staring into the fog.

Of a sudden the bridge awoke to life again, and now with the bell.
_Ting . . . ting, ting, ting--ting--ting, ting, ting_ then _ting, ting_
again.

The fog-horn stopped as though to listen. By and by, as from minute to
minute the bridge continued this eccentric performance, even the
children became aware that something was amiss.

Abruptly the ringing ceased, ceased just as a tall man--it was the
Scotch engineer--emerged from somewhere below and stood steadying
himself by the rail of the ladder.

"What the deevil?" he demanded angrily, staring aloft. "What the
deev--"

Here he collapsed on the lowest step. (A Glasgow man must be drunk
indeed before he loses his legs.)

The seaman Sam Lloyd came running, jumped over the engineer's prostrate
body and climbed to t