Dense darkness closed in around the tender. The lights of the harbour
disappeared completely, and the little cockle-shell with the glass
pavilion began to roll considerably. The wind whistled and howled.
Sometimes it blew so hard that it seemed to be bringing the tender to a
standstill. The screw actually did rise out of the water. Suddenly the
whistle screeched several times, and again the steamer made its way
through the darkness.

The rattling of the windows, the quivering of the ship's body, the
gurgling whirr-whirr of the propeller, the whistling, squalling and
howling of the wind, which laid the vessel on her side, all this combined
to produce extreme discomfort in the travellers. Again and again, as if
uncertain what course to pursue, the boat stopped and emitted its shrill
whistle, which was so stifled in the wild commotion of the waters that it
seemed nothing but the helpless breathing of a hoarse throat--stopped
and went backwards--stopped and went forwards, until again it came to an
uncertain halt, twisting and turning in the whirling waters, carried
aloft, plunged down, apparently lost and submerged in the darkness.

To be exposed to impressions of this sort for only an hour and a half is
enough gradually to reduce a traveller's nerves to a state of torture.
The proximity of that awful element the surface of which marks the limits
of the one element in which man is capable of living, forces upon the
mind thoughts of death and destruction; all the more so since the water's
tricks seem so incalculable to the landman that he sees danger where
there actually is none. Another thing hard for the man accustomed to
unhampered movement to bear is the close confinement. All at once he
loses his illusion of freedom of will. Activity, the thing that in the