"You're joking," was my first thought and utterance; for now he was
lighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care that
seemed in itself a contradiction.

"I wish I were," he answered. "Listen to that!"

He pointed to my cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at
once I was as a deaf man healed.

One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes me how
even I could have slept an instant in the abnormal din which I now
heard raging above my head. Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered;
men bawled; women shrieked; shouts of terror drowned the roar of
command.

"Have we long to last?" I asked, as I leaped for my clothes.

"Long enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's
only just been discovered; they may get it under. The panic's the
worst part at present, and we're out of that."

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly I put the question; his answer
was reassuring. Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop.
"And both of 'em as cool as cucumbers," added Ready.

They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at
the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which
is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the
next; but until this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and