"Monsieur, what an idea--and what was wrong with it?"

"Oh, it was just a fancy. The sea breeds fancies and superst.i.tions, you know that, Lepine, for I believe you are superst.i.tious yourself."

"Perhaps, monsieur; all sailors are, and I have had experiences. There are bad and good ships, just as there are bad and good men, of that I am sure. Perhaps that three-master was a bad ship." Lepine laughed as though at his own words. "All the same," he went on, "I don't like warnings, especially off Kerguelen."

They left the chart house and came out on the bridge.

The wind was still steady but the clouds had consolidated and the night was pitch black. On the bridge the _Gaston de Paris_ seemed driving into a solid wall of ebony.

The Prince after a glance into the binnacle was preparing to go down the bridge steps when a cry from the Look-out made him wheel round.

Suddenly, and as if evolved by magic from the blackness, the vague spectre of a vast ship shewed up ahead on the port bow making to cross their course. Thundering along under full canvas without lights and seemingly blind, she seemed only a pistol shot away.

Then the owner of the _Gaston de Paris_ did what no owner ought ever to do: seeing Destruction and judging that by a bold stroke it might be out-leaped, he sprang to the engine room telegraph and flung the lever to full speed ahead.

CHAPTER IV

DISASTER

Left alone, Mademoiselle de Bromsart finished the all but completed piece of embroidery in her lap. It did not take her five minutes. Then she held up the work and reviewed it with lips slightly pursed, then she rolled it up, rose, and went off to the state-room of Madame de Warens to bid her good-night.

Madame was sitting up in her bunk reading Maurice Barres' "Greco." The air of the place was stifling with the fume of cigarettes, and the girl nearly choked as she closed the door and stood facing the old lady in the bunk.

"Why don't you smoke, then you wouldn't mind it," cried the latter, putting her book down and taking off her gla.s.ses. "No, I won't have a port opened, d'you want me to be blown out of my bunk? Sit down."

"No, I won't stay," replied the other, "I just came to say good-night--and tell you something--He asked me to marry him."

"Who--Selm?"

"Yes."

"And what did you say?"

"I said 'No.'"

"Oh, you did?--and what's the matter with him--I mean what's the matter with you?"

"How?"

"How! The best match in Europe and you say 'no' to him--a man who could marry where he pleases and whom he pleased and you say 'no.'

Good-looking, without vices, richer than many a crowned head, second only to the reigning families--and you say 'no.'"

The old lady was working herself up. This admirer of Anarchasis Clootz and dilletanti of Anarchism had lately possessed one supreme desire, the desire to have for niece the Princess Selm.

"I thought you didn't believe in all that," said the girl.

"All what?"

"t.i.tles, wealth and so forth."

"I believe in seeing you happy and well-placed. I was not thinking of myself--well, there, it's done. There is no use in talking any more, for I know your disposition. You are hard, mademoiselle, that is your failing--without real heart. It is the modern disease. Well, that is all I have to say. I wish you good-night."

She put on her spectacles again.

"Good-night," said the other.

She went out, closed the door, and entered her state-room.

It was the same as Madame de Warens' only larger, a place to fill the mind of the old-time seafarers with the wildest surprise, for here was everything that a mortal could demand in the way of comfort and nothing of the stuffy upholstery that the word "state-rooms" suggests to the mind of the ordinary traveller.

The crimson velvet, so dear to the heart of the ship furnisher, was supplanted by ribbed silk, Persian rugs covered the floor, the metal fittings were of bronze, and worked, where possible, into sea designs: dolphins, sea-horses, and fucus. There was a writing-table that could be closed up into the wall so cunningly that no trace was left of where it had been, a tiny library of slim volumes uniformly bound in amber leather, a miracle of binding, the work of Grossart of Tours, a map-rack containing large scale maps of the world, and a tell-tale compa.s.s shewing the course of the _Gaston de Paris_ to whomever cared to read it. A long mirror let into the bulkhead aft increased the apparent size of the place. A bath-room and dressing-room lay forward.

Having closed the door she stood for a moment glancing at her reflection in the mirror. The picture seemed to fascinate her as though it were the reflection of some stranger. Then, turning from the mirror, she sat down for a moment on the couch by the door.

She felt disturbed. The words of Madame de Warens had angered her, producing the effect of a false accusation to which one is too proud to reply, but the momentary anger had pa.s.sed, giving place to a craving for freedom and fresh air. The atmosphere of the state-room felt stifling, she would go on deck. Then she remembered that she was in a thin evening dress and that she would have to change.

The two women shared a maid, and she was in the act of stretching out her hand to the electric bell by the couch to summon the maid, when the craving to get on deck without delay became so strong that she rose, went into the dressing-room and, without a.s.sistance, changed her gown for a tweed coat and skirt and her thin evening shoes for a pair of serviceable boots. Then she slipped on her oilskin and sou'wester and coming back into the state-room caught a momentary glimpse of herself in the mirror, a strange contrast to the elegant and black-gowned figure that had glanced at its reflection only ten minutes before.

She was coming up the saloon companion-way when the engines, easily heard from here, suddenly began a thunderous pow-wow; the ship lurched forward, and from the blackness of the open hatch above came a voice like the sudden clamour of sea-gulls. Then she was flung backwards and stretched, half-stunned, on the mat at the companion-way foot.

For a moment she did not know in the least what had happened. She fancied she had slipped and fallen, then, as she scrambled on to her hands and knees, someone pa.s.sed her, nearly treading on her, and rushed up the companion-way to the deck. It was the chief steward. Rising and holding on to the rail she followed him.

The deck was aslant, and in the windy blackness of the night nothing was to be seen for a moment; but the darkness was terrific with voices, voices from forward of the bridge and voices from alongside as though a hundred drunken sailors were yelling and blaspheming from a quay.

For the tenth of a second the idea of being alongside a quay came to her with nightmare effect, heightened by a ruffling and booming from the sky above, a rippling and flapping and thundering like the sound of vast and tangled wings.

Then a blaze of light shot out, making day.

The arc lamp of the fore-mast, always ready to be used for night work, had been run up and switched on.

To starboard and stern of the _Gaston de Paris_, a great ship, within pistol shot of the deck, and with her canvas spilling the wind and thrashing and thundering, was dipping her bows in the sea. Men were fighting for the boats, and the stern was so high that more than half of the rudder shewed like a great door swinging on its hinges. On the counter in pale letters the word

"_Albatross_"

shewed, and to the mind of the gazer all the horror seemed focussed in that calm statement, those commonplace letters written upon destruction.

Clinging to the hatch combing she saw, now, as a person sees in a dream, sailors rushing and struggling aft along the slanting main deck. The engines had ceased working but the dynamos were running on steam from the main boilers, and through the noises that filled the night the sewing machine sound of them threshed like a pulse. What had happened, what was happening, she did not know. The great ship to port seemed sinking but the _Gaston de Paris_ seemed safe, but for the horrible slant of the decks; she called out to the sailors, now cl.u.s.tered here and there by the boat davits, but her voice blew away on the wind, she saw Prince Selm, he was struggling aft along the slippery sloping deck, clutching at the bulwarks as he came, he seemed like a man engaged in some fantastic game--an unreal figure, now he was on the deck on all fours, now up again, clutching men by the shoulders, shaking them, shouting. She could hear his voice. The starboard boats were unworkable owing to the list to port. She did not know that, she only knew, and now for the first time, that the _Gaston de Paris_ was in fearful danger.

And instantly the thought came to her of the old woman below in her bunk and, on the thought, the mad instinct to rush below and save her.

Holding on to the woodwork of the hatch she was crawling towards the opening when blackness. .h.i.t her like a blow between the eyes. The arc lamp had gone out, the dynamos had ceased running.

On the stroke of the darkness the _Gaston de Paris_ heeled slightly deeper, flinging her to her knees, and as she hung, clutching the woodwork, she heard her name.

It was the Prince's voice. She answered, and at once on her answer a hand seized her cruelly as a vice. It caught her by the shoulder. She felt herself dragged along, buffeted, lifted, cast down--then nothing more.