"Fuses, flood valves, by Joe. How's that happen, by Joe?" Then one of the men said: "But someone called down that all was lost! Afterward you called 'open' and we thought you meant open the flood valves." The fuses had been burning for eight minutes out of their fifteen, and hundreds of gallons of water were pouring into the ship. By Joe, I looked for the fellow who said: "All is lost." He came forward at once and confessed. "I wasn't calling to the men below. I merely said it to myself." "Why do you say 'all is lost,' by Joe, just when everything is fine?" "Well, Captain, when the Englishman said that we would have to wait for an hour, I thought to myself that the game was up. It means that he is keeping us waiting while he sends a wireless to Copenhagen asking about the _Irma_, when there is no _Irma_." "By Joe," I said, "that's right." In our excitement, neither I nor my officers had thought about the wireless. It had not occurred to us to ask ourselves why we had been ordered to stand by for a whole hour. We didn't even think of Lloyd's Register. The search officer might have gone back to his ship to look up the _Irma_ in the Register, where there was no _Irma_. For days I had been on deck in the storm and in the ice regions. For the past half hour I had gone through worse turmoil even than that. And now, when everything seemed clear, the sky looked black again and that quid of tobacco started getting in its dirty work. I went to the rail and hung there on my elbows, staring through my binoculars at the _Avenger_ and watching for the flag signal. My hand shook, and instead of only one I could see three cruisers in my glass. I handed it to Leudemann and while he took a look I leaned there with the code book in my hand, ready to decode the signal when it came. I don't know how long it was, fifteen minutes or an hour, but finally three little flags went up the signal rope. Old imperturbable Leudemann steadied his glass. At last he made out the signal: "T-M-B." I thumbed the book clumsily. It seemed as though I would never find T-M-B. But there it was. It meant "Planet." Nonsense. Read the signal again. I was getting weaker and weaker, whether from the anxiety or from that quid, I don't know. This time he read: "T-X-B." Pages, columns, and then the right place.... Continue voyage. I felt as though my heart had two valves instead of one and was pumping madly through both. I sat down and breathed heavily. Instead of going about their ordinary tasks, my men wanted to yell like Indians.