d light,
though the haze, yonder?"

CHAPTER XII.

There was yet another "gathering" of human beings on the wind-swept
surface of the Atlantic, that evening, to whose minds it had come with
no small degree of anxiety. Not, perhaps, as great as that of the three
families over there on the shore of the bay, or even of the boys,
tossing along in their bubble of a yacht; but the officers, and not a
few of the passengers and crew, of the great, iron-builded ocean
steamer, were anything but easy in their minds.

Had they no pilot on board? To be sure they had, but they had, somehow,
seemed to bring that fog along with them, and the captain had a
half-defined suspicion that neither he nor the pilot knew exactly where
they were. That is a bad condition for a great ship to be in, and that,
too, so near a coast which requires good seamanship and skillful
pilotage in the best of weather. Not that the captain would have
confessed his doubt to the pilot, or the pilot to the captain, and that
was where the real danger lay. If they could only have permitted
themselves to speak of their possible peril, it would probably have
disappeared.

The steamer was French and her captain a French naval officer, and very
likely he and the pilot did not understand each other any too well. That
speed should be lessened, under the circumstances, was a matter of
course; but not to have gone on at all would have been even wiser. Not
to speak of the shore they were nearing, they might be sure they were
not the only craft steaming or sailing over those busy waters, and
vessels have sometimes run against one another in a fog as thick as
that. Something could be done in that direction, and lanterns with
bright colors were freely swung out; but the fog was likely to diminish
their usefulness, somewhat. None of the passengers were in a mood to go
to bed, with the end of their voyage so near, and they seemed, one and
all, disposed to discuss the fog. All but one, and he a boy.

A boy of about Dab Kinzer's age, slender and delicate looking, with
curly, light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a complexion which would have
been fair but for the traces it bore of a hotter sun than that of either
France or America. He seemed to be all alone, and to be feeling very
lonely, that night; and he was leaning over the rail, peering out into
the mist, humming to himself a sweet, wild air, in a strange, musical
tone.

Very strange. Very musical. Perhaps no such words had