st a surly mass, languid in movement as a grub.
As for Emmeline, she seemed dazed. The rag-doll lay a yard away from
her on the poop deck, unnursed; even the wretched box and its
whereabouts she seemed to have quite forgotten.

"Daddy!" suddenly cried Dick, who had clambered up, and was looking
over the after-rail.

"What?"

"Fish!"

Lestrange rose to his feet, came aft and looked over the rail.

Down in the vague green of the water something moved, something pale
and long--a ghastly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared the
surface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, he
saw the dark fin, and the whole hideous length of the creature; a
shudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.

"Ain't he fine?" said the child. "I guess, daddy, I'd pull him aboard
if I had a hook. Why haven't I a hook, daddy? Why haven't I a hook,
daddy?-- Ow, you're SQUEEZIN' me!"

Something plucked at Lestrange's coat: it was Emmeline--she also wanted
to look. He lifted her up in his arms; her little pale face peeped over
the rail, but there was nothing to see: the forms of terror had
vanished, leaving the green depths untroubled and unstained.

"What's they called, daddy?" persisted Dick, as his father took him
down from the rail, and led him back to the chair.

"Sharks," said Lestrange, whose face was covered with perspiration.

He picked up the book he had been reading--it was a volume of
Tennyson--and he sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlit
main-deck barred with the white shadows of the standing rigging.

The sea had disclosed to him a vision. Poetry, Philosophy, Beauty, Art,
the love and joy of life--was it possible that these should exist in
the same world as those?

He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautiful
things in it which he remembered with the terrible things he had just
seen, the things that were waiting for their food under the keel of the
ship.

It was three bells--half-past three in the afternoon--and the ship's
bell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the children
below; and as they vanished down the saloon companionway, Captain Le
Farge came aft, on to the poop, and stood for a moment looking over the
sea on the port side, where a bank of fog had suddenly appeared like
the spectre of a country.

"The sun has dimmed a bit," said he; "I can a'most look at it. Glass
steady enough--there's a fog coming up--ever seen a Pacific fog