‘Close to port--of one kind or another,’ answered Cassandra, vaguely unorthodox to the last. ‘As long as nothing runs into us we may do well enough. And dawn is at hand. At sunrise the fog may lift. Your husband ought to be here with you,’ she added, misinterpreting a certain vibration of Dinah’s voice. ‘I thank God that he is not! Alone, there is nothing to be frightened about. I thank God that Gaston is safe--warmly housed, away in Alderney!’ And, in truth, a reasonless, half-pleasurable excitement, the reaction after so much dull pain, had arisen in Dinah’s heart. That a dark ‘Perhaps’ lay straight and immediately before them, became at each moment more plain. The continued firing of guns gave token that other vessels were in the same plight as the _Princess_--once, indeed, a steamer drifted so close that they could see the faint reflection of her signal lamps, could hear the beating of her gong. The dreary sound of the fog-horn, the muffled tramp of the men on watch, the lights burning aloft in the ship’s rigging, the partially lowered boats, the solemn faces of the skipper and the crew, all combined into one unspoken word--Danger. CHAPTER XXXIV DEAD ROSE PETALS Dinah Arbuthnot thought over the few quarrels, the many misunderstandings of her married life, grown little, all, before the hour’s largeness. She thought how, in five or six minutes more--a collision, in weather like this, would be over briefly--in five or six minutes more she and Gaston might be parted, with never another kiss from his lips to hers. He would cherish the thought of her to his last breath, if she were lost to-night. She recognised the true metal in the man, was sure enough of that. Possibly, the remembrance of her, calm and untroubled in her grave, might prove a stronger influence over him for good, a keener stimulus to his genius, than her restless, jealous life had ever been! On such terms, she asked herself, was death a thing to be met with craven fear? Most of the party, obeying simple bodily wretchedness, crept, one after another, below--poor frightened, frozen Mrs. Verschoyle at length confessing that she would sooner be drowned comfortably in the cabin than stand up longer against the sickening roll of the anchored vessel on deck. Marjorie Bartrand, Dinah, and Miss Tighe lingered, Lord Rex and Geoffrey Arbuthnot (forced into comradeship for once) keeping up their spirits with cheerful talk, with stories well remembered or well invented, until a pale forecast of daylight began slowly, uncertainly, to filter through the fog. Then came a new untoward event to crown this night of misfortune. A lad on the forecastle had stumbled in the darkness over a coil of chain, and a cry quickly arose that the surgeon’s hand was wanted. The poor fellow lay in agony, with a twisted or broken ankle. Was there not some doctor on board among the gentlemen who could help him?