I thought we were doing very well indeed.  I did not mention that we had ceased to move, for she thought that a favorable symptom.  She went back to her quarters greatly cheered up.  Not so much, I think, from my words, as from my joyful aspect; for I did feel jolly, there was no doubt about it.  If that Water-devil had let go of us, I was willing to take all the other chances that might befall a ship floating about loose on the Bay of Bengal.

“The fog was so thick that night that it was damp and unpleasant on deck, and so, having hung out and lighted a couple of lanterns, I went below for a comfortable smoke in the captain’s room.  I was puffing away here at my ease, with my mind filled with happy thoughts of two or three weeks with Miss Minturn on this floating paradise, where she was bound to see a good deal of me, and couldn’t help liking me better, and depending on me more and more every day, when I felt a little jerking shock.  It was the same thing that we had felt before.  The Water-devil still had hold of us!

“I dropped my pipe, my chin fell upon my breast, I shivered all over.  In a few moments I heard the maid calling to me, and then she ran into the room.  ‘Miss Minturn wants to know, sir,’ she said, ’if you think that shock is a sudden twist in the current which is carrying us on?’ I straightened myself up as well as I could, and in the dim light I do not think she noticed my condition.  I answered that I thought it was something of that sort, and she went away.

“More likely, a twist of the Devil’s arm, I thought, as I sat there alone in my misery.

“In ten or fifteen minutes there came two shocks, not very far apart.  This showed that the creature beneath us was at work in some way or another.  Perhaps he had reached the opening of his den, and was shortening up his arm before he plunged down into it with us after him.  I couldn’t stay any longer in that room alone.  I looked for the maid, but she had put out the galley light, and had probably turned in for the night.

“I went up, and looked out on deck, but everything was horribly dark and sticky and miserable there.  I noticed that my lanterns were not burning, and then I remembered that I had not filled them.  But this did not trouble me.  If a vessel came along and saw our lights she would probably keep away from us, and I would have been glad to have a vessel come to us, even if she ran into us.  Our steamer would probably float long enough for us to get on board the other one, and almost anything would be better than being left alone in this dreadful place, at the mercy of the Water-devil.

“Before I left the deck I felt another shock.  This took out of me whatever starch was left, and I shuffled below and got to my bunk, where I tumbled in and covered myself up, head and all.  If there had been any man to talk to, it would have been different, but I don’t know when I ever felt more deserted than I did at that time.