entered and no one spoke to me, but all looked up as if I were the
shadow of death, I began to rally them for their seamanship, but got
no word of retort from one of them. "What's the matter with you all?"
I said; "you look as if you had had bad news." "The matter is we are
going ashore," said the chief engineer. "This--fool of a mate has got
caught in shore and we can't make steam enough to hold our own against
this wind." I had not thought of this; I was chafing at the delay and
the discomfort to Laura and the children. What was the worst in the
case was still to be known. The boilers of the steamer were old and
rotten, and had been condemned, and, but for the sharp economy of
the Greek steamship company, would have been out already. The chief
engineer, when he found that the engines at ordinary pressure did not
keep the steamer from, going astern, had tied the safety valve down
and made all the steam the furnaces would make. "If we don't go ahead
we are done for just as much as if we blow up," said he; "for if we
touch those rocks not a soul of us can escape, and we shall touch them
if we drift, just as surely as if we blow up."

I went out of the mess-room with a feeling that it was a dream,--so
bright, so beautiful a day,--we so well, so late from land, and so
near to death! "Bah!" I said to myself. "They are fanciful; the cliffs
are still a couple of miles away, and something will come to avert the
wreck." I went down to the stateroom; Laura and the boy were unable
to raise their heads from extreme sea-sickness, but baby Lisa was
swinging on the edge of her berth, delighted with the motion, and
singing like a bird, in her baby way. I sat down in my berth--there
were four berths in each room--and watched her, and somehow the faith
grew in me that we were not going that way at that time, that the
hour had not come; and I went back to the mess-room to try to inspire
confidence in my friends.