ss Abbey.

'It's summut run down in the fog, ma'am,' answered Bob. 'There's ever so
many people in the river.'

'Tell 'em to put on all the kettles!' cried Miss Abbey. 'See that the
boiler's full. Get a bath out. Hang some blankets to the fire. Heat some
stone bottles. Have your senses about you, you girls down stairs, and
use 'em.'

While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob--whom she
seized by the hair, and whose head she knocked against the wall, as a
general injunction to vigilance and presence of mind--and partly hailed
the kitchen with them--the company in the public room, jostling one
another, rushed out to the causeway, and the outer noise increased.

'Come and look,' said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all three hurried
to the vacated public room, and passed by one of the windows into the
wooden verandah overhanging the river.

'Does anybody down there know what has happened?' demanded Miss Abbey,
in her voice of authority.

'It's a steamer, Miss Abbey,' cried one blurred figure in the fog.

'It always IS a steamer, Miss Abbey,' cried another.

'Them's her lights, Miss Abbey, wot you see a-blinking yonder,' cried
another.

'She's a-blowing off her steam, Miss Abbey, and that's what makes the
fog and the noise worse, don't you see?' explained another.

Boats were putting off, torches were lighting up, people were rushing
tumultuously to the water's edge. Some man fell in with a splash, and
was pulled out again with a roar of laughter. The drags were called for.
A cry for the life-buoy passed from mouth to mouth. It was impossible to
make out what was going on upon the river, for every boat that put off
sculled into the fog and was lost to view at a boat's length. Nothing
was clear but that the unpopular steamer was assailed with reproaches
on all sides. She was the Murderer, bound for Gallows Bay; she was the
Manslaughterer, bound for Penal Settlement; her captain ought to be
tried for his life; her crew ran down men in row-boats with a relish;
she mashed up Thames lightermen with her paddles; she fired property
with her funnels; she always was, and she always would be, wreaking
destruction upon somebody or something, after the manner of all her
kind. The whole bulk of the fog teemed with such taunts, uttered in
tones of universal hoarseness. All the while, the steamer's lights moved
spectrally a very little, as she lay-to, waiting the upshot of whatever
accident had happened. Now, s