e by midnight. How foolish it is
to portion your future, at sea!

It was when I was arranging what I should do in the later hours of that
day, when we were at Billingsgate, that the skipper, staring round the
North Channel, said to me: "It looks as though London had been wiped out
since we left it. Where's the ships?"

The Maplin watched us pass with its red eye. We raised all the lights
true and clear. I went below, and we were talking of London, and the
last trains, when the engine-room telegraph gave us a great shock. "Stop
her!" we heard the watch cry below.

I don't know how we got on deck. There were too many on the companion
ladder at the same time. While we were struggling upwards we heard that
frantic bell ring often enough to drive the engine-room people
distracted. I got to the ship's side in time to see a liner's bulk glide
by. She would have been invisible but for her strata of lights. She was
just beyond our touch. A figure on her, high over us, came to her rail,
distinct in the blur of the light of a cabin behind him, and shouted at
us. I remember very well what he said, but it is forbidden to put down
such words here. The man at our wheel paid no attention to him, that
danger being now past, and so of no importance. He continued to spin the
spokes desperately, because, though we could not see the ships about us,
we could hear everywhere the alarm of their bells. We had run at eleven
knots into a bank of fog which seemed full of ships. The moon was
looking now over the top of the wall of fog, yet the _Windhover_, which,
with engines reversed, seemed to be going ahead with frightful velocity,
drove into an opacity in which there was nothing but the warning sounds
of a great fear of us. I imagined in the dark the loom of impending
bodies, and straining overside in an effort to make them out, listening
to the murmur of the stream, nervously fanned the fog with my hat in a
ridiculous effort to clear it. Twice across our bows perilous shadows
arose, sprinkled with stars, yet by some luck they drifted silently by
us, and the impact we expected and were braced for was not felt.

I don't know how long it was before the _Windhover_ lost way, but we
anchored at last, and our own bell began to ring. When our unseen
neighbours heard the humming of our exhaust, their frantic appeal
subsided, and only now and then they gave their bells a shaking, perhaps
to find whether we answered from the same p