“Most curious thing!” he began.

“What now?”

“Well, I found out about the collision.”

“How did it occur?”

“In this way.  The captain was on duty on the bridge, with the steersman at the wheel.  It was thickish weather then, much thicker than it is now—­in fact, there’ll soon be no breeze left, and look at the stars!  Suddenly the lookout man shouted that there was a sail on the weather bow, and it must have been pretty close, too.  The captain ordered the man at the wheel to put the boat to port—­I don’t know the exact phraseology of the thing—­so that we could pass the other ship on our starboard side.  Instead of doing that, the triple idiot shoved us to starboard as hard as he could, and before the captain could do anything, we were struck on the port paddle.  The steersman had sent us right into the other ship.  If he had wanted specially to land us into a good smash-up, he could scarcely have done it better.  A good thing we got caught on the paddle; otherwise we should have been cut clean in two.  As it was, the other boat recoiled and fell away.”

“Was she damaged?”

“Probably not.”

“How does the man at the wheel explain his action?”

“Well, that’s the curious part.  I was just coming to that.  Naturally he’s in a great state of terror just now, but he can just talk.  He swears that when the captain gave his order a third person ran up the steps leading to the bridge, and so frightened him that he was sort of dazed, and did exactly the wrong thing.”

“A queer tale!”

“I should think so.  But he sticks to it.  He even says that this highly mysterious third person made him do the wrong thing.  But that’s absolute tommy-rot.”

“The man must be mad.”

“I should have said he had been drunk, but there doesn’t seem to be any trace of that.  Anyhow, he sees visions, and I maintain that the Chatham and Dover people oughtn’t to have their boats steered by men who see visions, eh?”

“I agree with you.  I suppose we aren’t now in any real danger?”

“I should hardly think so.  We might have been.  It was pure luck that we happened to get struck on the paddle-box, and also it was pure luck that the sea has gone down so rapidly.  With a list like this, a really lively cross-sea would soon have settled us.”

We were silent for a few moments.  The girl looked idly round the ship, and her eyes encountered the figure of the mysterious man.  She seemed to shiver.

“Oh!” she exclaimed under her breath, “what a terrible face that man has!”

“Where?” said her friend.

“Over there.  And how is it he’s wearing a silk hat—­here?”

His glance followed hers, but my follower had turned abruptly round, and in a moment was moving quickly to the after-part of the ship.  He passed behind the smoke-stack, and was lost to our view.

“The back of him looks pretty stiff,” the young man said.  “I wonder if he’s the chap that alarmed the man at the wheel.”