through which the screw was thudding. They spread, dull silver, under
the haze of the moonlight till they joined the low coast of Malacca
away to the eastward. The voices of the singers at the harmonium were
held down by the awnings, and came to us with force.

'Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.'

It was as though the little congregation were afraid of the vastness
of the sea. But a laugh followed, and some one said, 'Shall we take
it through again a little quicker?' Then the Captain told the story
of just such a night, lowering his voice for fear of disturbing the
music and the minds of the passengers.

'She was the _Visigoth_,--five hundred tons, or it may have been
six,--in the coasting trade; one of the best steamers and best found
on the Kutch-Kasauli line. She wasn't six years old when the thing
happened: on just such a night as this, with an oily smooth sea, under
brilliant starlight, about a hundred miles from land. To this day no
one knows really what the matter was. She was so small that she could
not have struck even a log in the water without every soul on board
feeling the jar; and even if she had struck something, it wouldn't
have made her go down as she did. I was fourth officer then; we had
about seven saloon passengers, including the Captain's wife and another
woman, and perhaps five hundred deck-passengers going up the coast to
a shrine, on just such a night as this, when she was ripping through
the level sea at a level nine knots an hour. The man on the bridge,
whoever it was, saw that she was sinking at the head. Sinking by the
head as she went along. That was the only warning we got. She began
to sink as she went along. Of course the Captain was told, and he sent