dressing, a faint cry arose from somewhere aft on the upper deck--a
cry which was swiftly taken up by other voices, so that presently a
deck steward echoed it immediately outside my own stateroom:

"Man overboard! Man overboard!"

All my premonitions rallying in that one sickening moment, I sprang
out on the deck, half dressed as I was, and leaping past the boat
which swung nearly opposite my door, craned over the rail, looking
astern.

For a long time I could detect nothing unusual. The engine-room
telegraph was ringing--and the motion of the screws momentarily
ceased; then, in response to further ringing, recommenced, but so as
to jar the whole structure of the vessel; whereby I knew that the
engines were reversed. Peering intently into the wake of the ship, I
was but dimly aware of the ever growing turmoil around me, of the
swift mustering of a boat's crew, of the shouted orders of the
third-officer. Suddenly I saw it--the sight which was to haunt me for
succeeding days and nights.

Half in the streak of the wake and half out of it, I perceived the
sleeve of a white jacket, and, near to it, a soft felt hat. The sleeve
rose up once into clear view, seemed to describe a half-circle in the
air then sink back again into the glassy swell of the water. Only the
hat remained floating upon the surface.

By the evidence of the white sleeve alone I might have remained
unconvinced, although upon the voyage I had become familiar enough
with the drill shooting-jacket, but the presence of the gray felt hat