eep were wandering about inquiring what had happened.

But that was all. The half-hour which followed the stoppage of the ship
was a comparatively quiet half-hour, in which a few people came out of
their cabins indeed, and collected together in the corridors and
staircases gossiping, speculating and asking questions as to what could
have happened; but it was not a time of anxiety, or anything like it.
Nothing could be safer on this quiet Sunday night than the great ship,
warmed and lighted everywhere, with her thick carpets and padded
armchairs and cushioned recesses; and if anything could have added to
the sense of peace and stability, it was that her driving motion had
ceased, and that she lay solid and motionless-like a rock in the sea,
the still water scarcely lapping against her sides. And those of her
people who had thought it worth while to get out of bed stood about in
little knots, and asked foolish questions, and gave foolish answers in
the familiar manner of passengers on shipboard when the slightest
incident occurs to vary the regular and monotonous routine.

VIII

This was one phase of that first half-hour. Up on the high bridge,
isolated from all the indoor life of the passengers, there was another
phase. The watches had been relieved at ten o'clock, when the ship had
settled down for the quietest and least eventful period of the whole
twenty-four hours. The First Officer, Mr. Murdoch, was in command of the
bridge, and with him was Mr. Boxhall, the Fourth Officer, and the usual
look-out staff. The moon had set, and the night was very cold, clear and
starry, except where here and there a slight haze hung on the surface of
the water. Captain Smith, to whom the night of the sea was like day, and
to whom all the invisible tracks and roads of the Atlantic were as
familiar as Fleet Street is to a _Daily Telegraph_ reporter, had been in
the chart room behind the bridge to plot out the course for the night,
and afterwards had gone to his room to lie down. Two pairs of sharp eyes
were peering forward from the crow's nest, another pair from the nose of
the ship on the fo'c'stle head, and at least three pairs from the bridge
itself, all staring into the dim night, quartering with busy glances the
area of the black sea in front of them where the foremast and its wire
shrouds and stays were swinging almost imperceptibly across the starry
sky.

At twenty minutes to twelve the silence of the night was broken b