"By Gad!" declared Major Hassler with sudden conviction, as he straightened up and viewed his dripping hands and cuffs with an expression quite indescribable. "By Gad! That’s just what I think!" "James!" murmured a voice almost entirely smothered by rage. James, despite the horrible fear in his soul, dared to turn his gaze upon his mistress, when suddenly a spasm of pain crossed the lady’s face. "Oh!" she gasped. "Oh, my heart!" Wrath had given way to fright, and the hue of wrath to pallor. In the meantime, the _Black Swan_ was standing very still, as still as if on land,—which to be exact was where she was. From without came the sound of waves slapping idly against her sides, and then she shivered while the screws were reversed and churned desperately. From end to end of the cabin there were "Ohs" and "Ahs," and shrieks of dismay, with short ejaculations, as the guests struggled to their feet and stood to view the ruin which the sudden stoppage of the craft had wrought upon toilets, dispositions, and the atmosphere of Mrs. Harrington’s happy party. The next half hour, to employ a marine phrase, was devoted to salvage of one sort and another. One thing became speedily clear. The _Black Swan_ had her nose fast in most tenacious clay. No amount of churning of the screw could drag her off. And no amount of tooting of whistles brought any sort of craft to her assistance. She was stuck there till the tide should take her off. The tide was running out. By rough calculation, it would be eight hours till it came back strong enough to lift up her stern and rock her nose loose. It was an unpleasant prospect. With Mrs. Harrington sitting propped and pale in the end of the cabin, her guests tried to cheer her by making light of their plight and the prospect; but as the waters slipped out and out from under the _Black Swan_, till she lay on the bottom with a drunken list, and the hours crept along with dreary slowness through the tiresome night, one disposition after another succumbed to the inevitable and became cattish or bearish, according to sex. But the very first disposition of all to go permanently bad was that of Marien Dounay. Young Burbeck thought he understood to the full her capacity to be disagreeable, but learned in the first hour that this was a ridiculously mistaken assumption. Nor could any mere petulance on account of weariness or cramped quarters among people who under these circumstances speedily became a bore to themselves and to each other, account for her behavior. Never had Rollie seen so many manifestations of her feline restlessness, or her wiry endurance. When other women had sunk exhausted to sleep upon a cushion in a corner, or upon the shoulders of an escort who obligingly supported the fair head with his own weary body, Miss Dounay sat bolt and desperate, staring at the myriad shoreward lights as if they held some secret her wilful eyes would yet bore out of them.