OUT OF EGYPT.

"Un esclave est moins celui qu'on vend que celui qui se donne"


A sea fog was blowing across the smooth surface of the Maas where that
river is broad and shallow, and a steamer anchored in the channel, grim
and motionless, gave forth a grunt of warning from time to time, while
a boy with mittened hands rang the bell hung high on the forecastle
with a dull monotony. The wind blowing from the south-east drove before
it the endless fog which hummed through the rigging, and hung there in
little icicles that pointed to leeward. On the bridge of the steamer,
looking like a huge woollen barrel surmounted by a comforter and a cap
with ear-flaps, the Dutch pilot stood philosophically at his post. Near
him the captain, mindful of the company's time-tables, walked with a
quick, impatient step. The fog was blowing past at the rate of four or
five miles an hour, but the supply of it, emanating from the low lands
bordering the Scheldt, seemed to be inexhaustible. This fog, indeed,
blows across Holland nearly the whole winter.

The steamer's deck was covered with ice, over which sand had been
strewn. The passengers were below in the warm saloon. Only the
blue-faced boy at the bell on the forecastle was on the main-deck. At
times one of the watch hurried from the galley to the forecastle with a
pannikin of steaming coffee. The vessel had been anchored since
daybreak and the sound of other bells and other whistles far and near
told that she was not alone in these waters. The distant boom of a
steamer creeping cautiously down from Rotterdam seemed to promise that
farther inland the fog was thinner. A silence, broken only by the