We were silent for a few moments. The girl looked idly round the ship,

and her eyes encountered the figure of the mysterious man. She seemed

to shiver.

"Oh!" she exclaimed under her breath, "what a terrible face that man

has!"

"Where?" said her friend.

"Over there. And how is it he's wearing a silk hat--here?"

His glance followed hers, but my follower had turned abruptly round,

and in a moment was moving quickly to the after-part of the ship. He

passed behind the smoke-stack, and was lost to our view.

"The back of him looks pretty stiff," the young man said. "I wonder if

he's the chap that alarmed the man at the wheel."

I laughed, and at the same time I accidentally dropped Rosa's

jewel-case, which had never left my hand. I picked it up hurriedly.

"You seem attached to that case," the young man said, smiling. "If we

had foundered, should you have let it go, or tried to swim ashore with

it?"

"The question is doubtful," I replied, returning his smile. In

shipwrecks one soon becomes intimate with strangers.

"If I mistake not, it is a jewel-case."

"It is a jewel-case."

He nodded with a moralizing air, as if reflecting upon the sordid love

of property which will make a man carry a jewel-case about with him

when the next moment he might find himself in the sea. At least, that

was my interpretation of the nodding. Then the brother and sister--for

such I afterwards discovered they were--left me to take care of my

jewel-case alone.

Why had I dropped the jewel-case? Was it because I was startled by the

jocular remark which identified the mysterious man with the person who

had disturbed the steersman? That remark was made in mere jest. Yet I

could not help thinking that it contained the truth. Nay, I knew that

it was true; I knew by instinct. And being true, what facts were

logically to be deduced from it? What aim had this mysterious man in

compelling, by his strange influences, the innocent sailor to guide

the ship towards destruction--the ship in which I happened to be a

passenger?... And then there was the railway accident. The stoker had

said that the engine-driver had been dazed--like the steersman. But

no. There are avenues of conjecture from which the mind shrinks. I

could not follow up that train of thought.

Happily, I did not see my enemy again--at least, during that journey.

And my mind was diverted, for the dawn came--the beautiful September

dawn. Never have I greeted the sun with deeper joy, and I fancy that

my sentiments were shared by everyone on board the vessel. As the

light spread over the leaden waters, and the coast of France was

silhouetted against the sky, the passengers seemed to understand that

danger was over, and that we had been through peril, and escaped. Some

threw themselves upon their knees, and prayed with an ecstasy of

thankfulness. Others re-commenced their hymning. Others laughed

rather hysterically, and began to talk at a prodigious rate. A few,

like myself, stood silent and apparently unmoved.




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