time that they had reached the spot where the Kangaroo went down, there
was no living creature to be seen; nothing but the wash of the great
waves, over which the mist once more closed thick and heavy as a pall.
They shouted, and once they heard a faint answer, and rowed towards it;
but when they got to the spot whence the sound seemed to proceed, they
could see nothing except some wreckage. They were all dead, their agony
was done, their cries no more ascended to the pitiless heavens; and wind,
and sky, and sea were just as they had been.

"Oh, my God! my God!" wept Augusta, clinging to the thwarts of the
tossing boat.

"One boat got away--where is it?" asked Mr. Meeson, who, a wet and
wretched figure, was huddled up in the stern-sheets, as he rolled his
wild eyes round striving to pierce the curtain of the mist.

"There's something," said Johnnie, pointing through a fog-dog in the
mist, that seemed to grow denser rather than otherwise as the light
increased, at a round, boat-like object that had suddenly appeared to the
starboard of them.

They rowed up to it; it was a boat, but empty and floating bottom
upwards. Closer examination showed that it was the cutter, which, when
full of women and children, had been fastened to the vessel and dragged
down with her as she sank. At a certain depth the pressure of the water
had been too great and had torn the ring in the bow bodily out of her, so
that she returned to the surface. But those in her did not return--at
least, not yet. Once more, two or three days hence, they would arise from
the watery depths and look upon the skies with eyes that could not see,
and then vanish for ever.