I laughed, and at the same time I accidentally dropped Rosa’s jewel-case, which had never left my hand.  I picked it up hurriedly.

“You seem attached to that case,” the young man said, smiling.  “If we had foundered, should you have let it go, or tried to swim ashore with it?”

“The question is doubtful,” I replied, returning his smile.  In shipwrecks one soon becomes intimate with strangers.

“If I mistake not, it is a jewel-case.”

“It is a jewel-case.”

He nodded with a moralizing air, as if reflecting upon the sordid love of property which will make a man carry a jewel-case about with him when the next moment he might find himself in the sea.  At least, that was my interpretation of the nodding.  Then the brother and sister—­for such I afterwards discovered they were—­left me to take care of my jewel-case alone.

Why had I dropped the jewel-case?  Was it because I was startled by the jocular remark which identified the mysterious man with the person who had disturbed the steersman?  That remark was made in mere jest.  Yet I could not help thinking that it contained the truth.  Nay, I knew that it was true; I knew by instinct.  And being true, what facts were logically to be deduced from it?  What aim had this mysterious man in compelling, by his strange influences, the innocent sailor to guide the ship towards destruction—­the ship in which I happened to be a passenger?...  And then there was the railway accident.  The stoker had said that the engine-driver had been dazed—­like the steersman.  But no.  There are avenues of conjecture from which the mind shrinks.  I could not follow up that train of thought.

Happily, I did not see my enemy again—­at least, during that journey.  And my mind was diverted, for the dawn came—­the beautiful September dawn.  Never have I greeted the sun with deeper joy, and I fancy that my sentiments were shared by everyone on board the vessel.  As the light spread over the leaden waters, and the coast of France was silhouetted against the sky, the passengers seemed to understand that danger was over, and that we had been through peril, and escaped.  Some threw themselves upon their knees, and prayed with an ecstasy of thankfulness.  Others re-commenced their hymning.  Others laughed rather hysterically, and began to talk at a prodigious rate.  A few, like myself, stood silent and apparently unmoved.

Then the engines began to beat.  There was a frightful clatter of scrap-iron and wood in the port paddle-box, and they stopped immediately, whereupon we noticed that the list of the vessel was somewhat more marked than before.  The remainder of the port paddle had, in fact, fallen away into the water.  The hymn-singers ceased their melodies, absorbed in anticipating what would happen next.  At last, after many orders and goings to and fro, the engines started again, this time, of course, the starboard paddle, deeply immersed, moved by itself.  We progressed with infinite slowness, and in a most peculiar manner, but we did progress, and that was the main thing.  The passengers cheered heartily.