‘Give her steam there!’ said the captain to the engine-room.  ’Steam for the whistle, if we have to go dead slow.’

We bellowed again, and the damp dripped off the awnings on to the deck as we listened for the reply.  It seemed to be astern this time, but much nearer than before.

‘The Pembroke Castle on us!’ said Keller; and then, viciously, ‘Well, thank God, we shall sink her too.’

‘It’s a side-wheel steamer,’ I whispered.  ’Can’t you hear the paddles?’

This time we whistled and roared till the steam gave out, and the answer nearly deafened us.  There was a sound of frantic threshing in the water, apparently about fifty yards away, and something shot past in the whiteness that looked as though it were gray and red.

‘The Pembroke Castle bottom up,’ said Keller, who, being a journalist, always sought for explanations.  ’That’s the colours of a Castle liner.  We’re in for a big thing.’

‘The sea is bewitched,’ said Frithiof from the wheel-house.  ’There are two steamers!’

Another siren sounded on our bow, and the little steamer rolled in the wash of something that had passed unseen.

‘We’re evidently in the middle of a fleet,’ said Keller quietly.  ’If one doesn’t run us down, the other will.  Phew!  What in creation is that?’

I sniffed, for there was a poisonous rank smell in the cold air—­a smell that I had smelt before.

’If I was on land I should say that it was an alligator.  It smells like musk,’ I answered.

‘Not ten thousand alligators could make that smell’ said Zuyland; ’I have smelt them.’

‘Bewitched!  Bewitched!’ said Frithiof.  ’The sea she is turned upside down, and we are walking along the bottom.’

Again the Rathmines rolled in the wash of some unseen ship, and a silver-gray wave broke over the bow, leaving on the deck a sheet of sediment—­the gray broth that has its place in the fathomless deeps of the sea.  A sprinkling of the wave fell on my face, and it was so cold that it stung as boiling water stings.  The dead and most untouched deep water of the sea had been heaved to the top by the submarine volcano—­the chill still water that kills all life and smells of desolation and emptiness.  We did not need either the blinding fog or that indescribable smell of musk to make us unhappy—­we were shivering with cold and wretchedness where we stood.

‘The hot air on the cold water makes this fog,’ said the captain; ’it ought to clear in a little time.’

‘Whistle, oh! whistle, and let’s get out of it,’ said Keller.

The captain whistled again, and far and far astern the invisible twin steam-sirens answered us.  Their blasting shriek grew louder, till at last it seemed to tear out of the fog just above our quarter, and I cowered while the Rathmines plunged bows under on a double swell that crossed.

‘No more,’ said Frithiof, ’it is not good any more.  Let us get away, in the name of God.’