All the journey down the young lady, having relieved her mind, seemed given over to the highest spirits. Now and again, even, a topical allusion, a spice of slang would come to garnish her discourse, and give Gilead a painful idea of the nature of the company which her young destiny had ruled her. She chaffed the shipping clerk demurely, and plied him with her eyes in a way which dreadfully embarrassed that susceptible youth, who was obviously torn between his admiration for so much beauty and liveliness and an almost irresistible desire to respond in kind, and his respectful awe of the young plutocrat whose steps he attended. Gilead, in short, was glad when the journey had come to an end, and they stepped out upon the platform at Sheerness. The barge which was to convey them to the sunken vessel was already in waiting by the hard, with a couple of men in her in addition to the diver, who, fully apparelled but for his helmet, sat beside the apparatus which was to supply him with air. They put off at once, for the flow was running strong, and a pull of a mile was needed to carry them to the spot where a lighter, flying a danger signal, was moored above the invisible _Prinz Karl_. It was a lovely glowing day. Mist and water blended in that luminous haze which seems to obliterate the boundaries between death and existence, and to drug the soul in Lethe. Swimming within that neutral commingling of elements, air melting into liquid and liquid into air, the boat drifted like a bubble; all sense of gravity appeared lost. The world was a remote thing; the town they had left a mirage; all sounds coming from it were subdued to a soft humming and tinkling like noises in a dream. They only jarring note, to Gilead at least, was supplied by Miss Limner. The young lady did not somehow seem to fit into the picture.