The old woman looked familiar to him.  “It must be mother,” he thought.  “I’ve never seen any one as tiny as mother, and surely no one but mother could be coming along so softly and quietly without waking people.”

He noticed that his mother wore over her black dress a long white linen surplice, edged with a wide border of lace, such as is worn by priests.  In her hand she held the large missal with the gold cross which he had seen hundreds of times lying on the altar in the church at home.

The little acolytes now placed their candles at the side of his hammock and knelt down, each swinging a censer.  The old sailor caught the sweet odour of burning incense, saw blue clouds ascend, and heard the rhythmical click, click of the censer chains.  In the meantime, his mother had opened the big book and was reading the prayers for the dead.  Now it seemed good to him to be lying at the bottom of the sea—­much better than being in the churchyard.  He stretched himself in the hammock, and for a long time he could hear his mother’s voice mumbling Latin words.  The smoke of the incense curled round him as he listened to the even click, click of the moving censers.

Then it all ceased.  The acolytes took up their candles and walked away, followed by his mother, who suddenly closed the book with a bang.  He saw all three disappear beneath the gray hammocks.

The instant they had gone the silence was at an end.  He heard the breathing of his comrades, the timbers creaked, the wind whistled, and the waves swish-swashed against the ship.  Then he knew that he was still among the living, and on top of the sea.

“Jesu Maria!  What can be the meaning of the things I have seen this night?” he asked himself.

Ten minutes later L’Univers was struck amidships.  It was as if the steamer had been cut in two.

“This was what I expected,” thought the old seaman.

During the terrible confusion that ensued while the other sailors, only half awake, rolled out of their hammocks, he carefully dressed himself in his best clothes.  He had had a foretaste of death which was sweet and mild, and it seemed to him that the sea had already claimed him as its own.

***

A little cabin boy lay sleeping in the deckhouse near the dining salon when the collision occurred.  Startled by the shock, he sat up in his bunk, half dazed, and wondering what had happened.  Just over his head there was a small porthole, through which he peered.  All he could see was fog and some shadowy gray object which had, as it were, sprung from the fog.  He seemed to see monstrous gray wings.  A mammoth bird must have swooped down on the ship, he thought.  The steamer rolled and heeled as the huge monster went at it with claws and beak and flapping wings.