ed the extravagant image of a
nightmare rather than the memory of an actual thing. Was it true that
they had one and all lost their lives: the three clergymen with their
austere faces, the four happy, cheerful boys, their father and mother,
the little girl who had cried, the child that had smiled at Isabel,
the captain and every single individual of all those who had covered
the _Queen Mary's_ decks?

About four o'clock, the clouds, unrolling in blacker and denser
masses, had conquered the heavens. Already the watchers felt the first
breath of the great squalls whose precipitous onset was at hand, whose
battalions, let loose across the Atlantic, were about to rush into the
narrow straits of the Channel and mingle their devastating efforts
with the mysterious forces rising from the depths of the sea. The
horizon was blotted out as the clouds released their contents.

But the yacht was nearing Dieppe. The Count and Simon Dubosc, each
gazing through a pair of binoculars, cried out as with one voice,
struck at the same moment by the most unexpected sight. Looking at the
row of buildings, which line the long sea-front like a tall rampart of
brick and stone, they could plainly see that the roof and upper storey
of the two largest hotels, the Imperial and the Astoria, situated in
the middle, had collapsed. And the next instant they caught sight of
other houses which were tottering, leaning forward, fissured and
half-demolished.

Suddenly a flame shot up from one of these houses. In a few minutes
there was a violent outbreak of fire; and on every side, from one end
of the sea-front to the other, a panic-stricken crowd, whose shouts
they could hear, came pouring down the streets and running to the
beach.

"There is no doubt about it," spluttered the Count. "There has been an
earthquake, a very violent shock, which must have synchronized with
the sort of waterspout in which the _Queen Mary_ disappeared."

When nearer, they saw that the sea must have risen, sweeping over the
sea-wall, for long streaks of mud marked the lawns, while the beach to
right and left was covered with stranded shipping.

And they saw too that the end of the jetty and the light-house had
disappeared, that the breakwater had been carried away and that boats
were drifting about the harbour.

The wireless telegram announcing the wreck of the _Queen Mary_ had
redoubled the panic. No one dared fly from the peril on land by
taking to the open sea. The re