“Have you seen anything of Captain Granet lately?”

“Nothing,” she replied.

He turned his head slightly towards her.

“Would it trouble you very much if he never came to see you again?”

She was watching the misty dawn.

“I do not know,” she answered, “but I think that he will come.”

“I am not so sure,” he told her.

“Do you mean that he is in any fresh trouble?” she asked quickly.

“I don’t think he needs any fresh trouble exactly,” Thomson remarked, “but suppose we leave him alone for a little time?  Our meeting was so unexpected, and, for me, such a pleasure.  Don’t let us spoil it.”

“Let us talk of other things,” she agreed readily.  “Tell me, for instance, just what does a submarine look like when it pops up out of the sea?”

“I have never seen one close to,” he admitted, “except on the surface.  Why do you ask?”

She pointed with her forefinger to a little spot almost between two banks of mist.

“Because I fancied just now that I saw something sticking up out of the water there, something which might have been the periscope of a submarine,” she replied.

He looked in the direction which she indicated but shook his head.

“I can see nothing,” he said, “but in any case I don’t think they would attack a hospital ship.  This is a dangerous area for them, too.  We are bound to have a few destroyers close at hand.  I wonder if Ralph—­”

He never finished his sentence.  The shock which they had both read about but never dreamed of experiencing, flung them without a moment’s warning onto their hands and feet.  The steamer seemed as though it had been lifted out of the water.  There was a report as though some great cannon had been fired off in their very ears.  Looking along the deck, it suddenly seemed to Thomson that her bows were pointing to the sky.  The after portion, where they were seated, was vibrating and shaking as though they had struck a rock, and only a few yards away from them, towards the middle of the boat, the end of the cabin was riven bare to the heavens.  Timbers were creaking and splintering in every direction.  There was a great gap already in the side of the steamer, as though some one had taken a cut out of it.  Then, high above the shrieking of the escaped steam and the cracking of woodwork, the siren of the boat screamed out its frantic summons for help.  Geraldine for the moment lost her nerve.  She began to shriek, and ran towards the nearest boat, into which the people were climbing like ants.  Thomson drew her back.

“Don’t hurry,” he begged.  “Here!”