He had not begun to take account of stock of his own responsibility for this disaster. The whirl of events had been too dizzying. As master of the ship he would be held to account for her mishap. But to what extent had he been negligent? He could not figure it out. He realized that excitement plays strange pranks with a man's consciousness of linked events or of the passage of time. He could not understand why the steamer piled up so quickly after the collision. According to his ample knowledge of the shoals, he had been on his true course and well off the dangerous shallows. His first mate met him amidship. “I sent off one of our life-boats, sir. Told 'em to go back and hunt for the men we saw in the water. They found two. Others seem to be gone.” “I'm glad you thought of it, Mr. Bangs. I ought to have attended to it, myself.” “You had enough on your hands, sir, as it was. She was the _Lucretia M. Warren_, with granite from Vinal-haven. That's what gave us such an awful tunk.” “Who are the men?” “Mate and a sailor. They've had some hot drinks, and are coming along all right.” “We'll have a word with them, Mr. Bangs.” The survivors of the _Warren_ were forward in the crew's quarters, and they were still dazed. They had not recovered from their fright; they were sullen. “I'm sorry, men! Sailor to sailor, you know what I mean if I don't say any more. It's bad business on both sides. But what were you doing in the fairway?” “We wa'n't in the fairway,” protested a grizzled man, evidently the mate. He was uneasy in his borrowed clothes--he had surrendered his own garments to a pantryman who had volunteered to dry them. “You must have been,” insisted Captain Mayo. “I know we was all of two miles north of the regular course. I 'ain't sailed across these shoals for thirty years not to know soundings when I make 'em myself. Furthermore, she'll speak for herself, where she's sunk.” The captain could not gainsay that dictum. The mate scowled at the young man. “I've got a question of my own. What ye doing, yourself, all of two miles out of your course, whanging along, tooting your old whistle as if you owned the sea and had rollers under you to go across dry ground with, too?” “I was not two miles out of my course,” protested the captain, and yet the sickening feeling came to him that there had been some dreadful error, somewhere, somehow.