A man half ran, half fell, down the stairway that led into the saloon and stood before the affrighted pa.s.sengers. No tongue could form a question, but each eager face asked,

"What is it? What has happened?"

His voice came, thin and husky, "We've been struck by another ship in the fog!"

At sea, at night, and that a night of winter chill--and the fog! Such the thought. The fact--ten thousand tons of steel and wood, the product of man's industry, fashioned by his brain, and blood, and bone, crushed and useless, and half a thousand human beings--looking forward to years of happiness--doomed to a terrific struggle with the elements. Strong, courageous, creative man--now a weak, fear-stricken, helpless creature!

"_To the boats!_" came the cry from above, and it was echoed by hundreds of voices. In those three words were a gleam of hope: they opened a path, but through what and to what would it lead? The other ship, a tramp steamer, which had collided with the _Altonia_ was already sinking, and in a few minutes went down, bow foremost, only a few of the crew having escaped in their own boats.

Quincy had been an athlete in his college days. In time of danger, whether the man be ignorant or educated, one feeling--the instinct of self-preservation--is paramount. Alice and Florence had stood mute, helpless. Quincy put an arm about each and sprang to the narrow doorway. It was blocked by two stout men who fought frantically to gain precedence.

Quincy placed his wife in front of him, and, with the hand thus temporarily freed, he grasped one of the men by the collar and threw him back into the saloon where he was trampled upon by the frenzied pa.s.sengers.

Regardless of the consequence of his act, Quincy mounted the stairs quickly and gained the deck. The boats were being filled rapidly. He placed his wife and sister in one of them.

Alice cried, "Come, Quincy, there is room here."

"No, Alice, not yet. The women must go first."

"I will not go without you."

"Yes, you will, Alice--and you know why."

The mighty craft was filling rapidly. Captain Haskins feared that like the tramp steamer it would founder before the pa.s.sengers could get into the boats--their frail hope for safety. For himself, he asked no place.

He had the spirit of the soldier who expires beside his dying horse, looking fondly at the animal that has borne him so many times in safety, and now gives up his life with his master's.

"For G.o.d's sake, come, Quincy!" cried Alice. "For our sake!" and Florence added her entreaties.

Quincy turned and saw a woman with a child by her side. She had made her way from the steerage. She was being deported, for she suffered from trachoma. She had been refused permission to land and join her husband who had stood outside the "pen" and gazed at her and the child. Quincy placed the woman in the boat beside his wife and put the child in its mother's arms.

"Lower away!" came a shrill cry.

"Oh, Quincy, must we part thus?"

Captain Haskins grasped Quincy by the arm.

"Get into the boat, Mr. Sawyer."

Quincy saw that the boat, filled with women, was already over-loaded.

He turned to the Captain and said: "There is more room here with you."

Nature's ways are mysterious but effective. A brisk breeze broke the fog, and the rays of the noonday sun fell upon a placid sea. The boat containing Alice and Florence was picked up by the _Macedonian_ of a rival line and the rescued made comfortable. For hours the steamer cruised about rescuing hundreds of the _Altonia_'s pa.s.sengers, but some of the boats were never heard from.

Alice and many others had hoped that the wrecked vessel was still afloat, but the _Altonia_ had disappeared,--was far below in hundreds of fathoms of water.

CHAPTER XII

FERNBOROUGH HALL

Fernborough Hall,--not a hall in the town of Fernborough in the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts, but a rambling, old-fashioned brick building in the County of Suss.e.x in "Merrie England;" a stately home set in the middle of hundreds of acres of upland, lowland, and woodland.

Wings had been added as required, and a tower from which, on a clear day, the English Channel could be seen with the naked eye, while a field-gla.s.s brought into view the myriad craft, bound east and west, north and south, on the peaceful missions of trade.

There was no terrace upon which gaudy peac.o.c.ks strutted back and forth, but in front of the Hall was a small artificial lake in which some transplanted fish led the lives of prisoners. Lady Fernborough begged the Baronet to end their miserable existence, but, to him, innovation was folly and destruction bordered on criminality.

"When I am gone, Ella," he would say, "you may introduce your American ideas, for everything will be yours. When the Fernborough name dies, let the fish die too."

The long search for his lost daughter had made him misanthropic. His knowledge of her sad death had been accompanied, it is true, by the pleasing intelligence that his daughter's child lived, but that grand-daughter, though of his blood and British born, had not been educated according to British ideas. To be sure, she was now a Countess, but she had been transplanted to her native soil, and had not grown there.

It might be asked, if he was so insular in his ideas, why had he taken an American wife, and she a widow? He had been charmed by her vivacity.

She lifted him out of the gloom in which he had lived so long. If she had been tame and prosaic, she would have worn the weeds of widowhood again in a short time. She made him comfortable; she surrounded him with the brightest people she could find; he was not allowed to mope indoors, and Sir Stuart Fernborough and his sprightly American wife attended all the important social functions of the County, and many in London, and at the houses of their friends. And now a great joy was to come to Lady Fernborough. She expected visitors from the United States, and what she considered needful preparations kept her in a flutter of excitement.

"How soon do you expect them?" asked Sir Stuart at breakfast.

"To-morrow, or next day. They sailed on the tenth; to-morrow is the seventeenth, but they may rest for a day in Liverpool--"

"Or stay a day or two in London," suggested Sir Stuart.

"I hope not, for my guests will be impatient to see a real live American ex-governor. Quincy's political advancement has been very rapid."

"America is a rapid country, my dear," was Sir Stuart's comment.

When Lady Fernborough reached her boudoir, she seated herself at her writing desk and wrote rapidly for nearly an hour.

"I don't wish too many guests," she soliloquized as she sealed the last invitation. "Now, I must write to Linda."

"My dear Linda,

"I have a great surprise for you. You must forgive me for keeping a secret. I do it so seldom, I wished the experience. I am like the penniless suitor who proposed to an heiress, who, he knew, would reject him, just to see how it would make him feel to lose a fortune. I think I saw that in Punch, but it fits my case exactly. They will be here, _sure_, day after to-morrow. I mean Quincy and Alice, and, I hope, Maude. Come and bring all the children. I suppose Algernon is in London helping to make laws for unruly Britishers, but we will make merry and defy the constables. Despite my marital patronymic, and my armorial bearings, I am still, your loving aunt Ella."

Alice was not to tell the sad news to Lady Fernborough. The telegraph outstrips the ocean liner, and a newspaper, with tidings of the great calamity, was in Aunt Ella's hands long before the arrival of the broken-hearted wife and disconsolate sister. The invitations were countermanded, and days of sorrow followed instead of the antic.i.p.ated time of joyfulness.

Alice and Florence told the story of the tragedy over and over again to sympathizing listeners.

"That was just like Quincy to give his place to that poor woman and her child," said Aunt Ella. "Like Bayard he was without fear and he died without reproach."

Alice would not abandon hope. She racked her brain for possibilities and probabilities. Perhaps there had been another boat in which her husband and the Captain escaped. They might have been discovered and rescued by some vessel bound to America, or, perhaps, some faraway foreign country.

He would let them know as soon as he reached land.

Aunt Ella, though naturally optimistic, did not, in her own heart, share Alice's hopeful antic.i.p.ations. Perhaps Florence's somewhat extravagant account of the collision and the events which followed it led her to form the opinion that her nephew's escape from death was impossible.

Hope takes good root, but it is a flower that, too often, has no blossom. A month pa.s.sed--two--three--four--five--six--and then despair filled the young wife's heart. She could bear up no longer, and Dr.

Parshefield made frequent visits.

Aunt Ella pressed the fatherless infant to her breast.