"Ahoy! Mr. Rogers, it is. What's wrong?" "Thank God I've found you!" The voice sounded suddenly quite close at hand, and a man blundered against the doorstep. "Eh?"--the others saw Mr. Rogers give back in astonishment--"The Lord Proprietor?" "Safe and sound, too, by Heaven's mercy," said the Lord Proprietor, plucking off his peaked cap and shaking the water from it. He carried a lantern, and his jacket and loose trousers of yellow oilskin shone with the wet like a suit of mail. "All the way from Inniscaw I've come, in the gig. Peter Hicks and old Abe pulled me, and the Lord knows where we made land or what has become of them. Man, there's a vessel ashore--a liner, they say! Didn't you hear the gun a minute since?" "Yes, yes; but where is she?" "That's more than I know. Somewhere among the Off Islands; on the Terrier, maybe, or the Hell-meadows. All I can tell you is that old Abe brought the news to the Priory, almost three hours ago: his son-in-law, young Ashbran, had seen her in a lift of the fog--a powerful steamship with two funnels and a broad white band upon each. She hadn't struck when he saw her; but she was nosing into an infernal mess of rocks, and the light closing down fast. I didn't see Ashbran himself; Abe believed he had put across to warn your men. But as the old man couldn't swear to it I told him to get out the gig and fetch Peter Hicks, and so we started." "I'm wondering why those men of mine haven't brought me warning. Ashbran can't have reached them." "He started late, belike, and lost his way in the fog; or it's even possible--though you won't believe it--that your men started to find you and have lost themselves. My good sir, you never knew such a fog!" "Yet I left word with the chief boatman," mused Mr. Rogers. "He knows perfectly well where I am." "Does he?" said the Lord Proprietor. "Then it's more than I do. What house is this?" "Why, Fossell's. Good Lord! didn't you know?" "My dear Sir Caesar--" Mr. Fossel stepped forward solicitously. "Eh? So it is.... Good evening, Mr. Fossell! That picture of the Waterloo Banquet seemed familiar, somehow." The Lord Proprietor nodded towards a framed engraving on the wall. "Yes, to be sure--and Landseer's 'Twa Dogs.' But this is worse than the Arabian Nights! We must have missed the harbour by miles!" "You came ashore at Cam Point, most probably," Mr. Fossell suggested. "The tide sets that way, and from Cam Point it is but a step." "A step, is it? Man, I've been wandering in blank darkness for a full hour. Twice I've found myself on the edge of a cliff. I've followed walls only to be led into open fields. I've struck across open fields, only to tumble against troughs, midden heaps, pig-styes. I walked straight up against this house, supposing myself somewhere near the batteries on Garrison Hill--though how I had managed to miss the town was more than I could explain." "The wonder is you ever fetched across from Inniscaw."