They went ashore over a gangway dusted with sand that they might obtain a foothold upon it. They had thought that it would be warmer off the sea, but when the train moved away and they crossed the frozen fields of Kent, a new rigour penetrated the ill-warmed carriages and seemed to search their very bones. At Dover newsboys had cried the morning papers with the latest news of the phenomenal frost and of the rumours of a great strike of transport workers following upon it. It seemed to be the one topic of conversation in the train and out of it. Great experts in meteorology had been interviewed in London, in Vienna, in New York. They agreed that England was suffering this abnormal spell because of the reduced flow of her old friend, the Gulf Stream. There could be no other logical conclusion, and the best that could be said was that the severity of the visitation was the soundest argument for its speedy disappearance. Trevelle read all this out to his companion in the reserved compartment which carried them to Victoria. He seemed willing to be impressed by such authorities and was amazed to find that his companion differed from him absolutely. Faber confessed that he had looked for such a winter in England and would have been surprised at any other. His manner had become a little restless again, and he was very anxious for the journey to terminate. "We are going to have a lively time in London," he said. "I guess I'll be caught in this pit after all, and pretty warm it will be for some of them. Do you know how much wheat your country wants every week to feed its people, Mr. Trevelle? I've figured it out, and it seems to me it's somewhere about five million bushels; that's wheat alone, to say nothing of an Englishman's roast beef and what goes with it. Well, I suppose you've food enough in the country for three weeks at a press. Perhaps you have and perhaps you haven't. Let this frost hold and the strike continue in my country, which I hear is likely, and you're going to see the biggest panic in London you ever saw in all your life. I had a notion of it when I was last here and I mentioned it to some of them. Professor Geikie, of St. Louis, first put it into my head as long ago as last October, when he was taking observations of the Gulf Stream for the Shippers' Institute of the southern ports; he noticed this check in the flow. 'Let it go on,' he said, 'and they'll have a winter in Britain which will be memorable.' I knew the professor and put my money behind him. You've got the winter, and you're only at the beginning of it. God knows when it will end or how, but I'd be glad to be out of this country if I could, and that's sure. It's too late to think of that, now, however." "Do you seriously believe then that the wheat supply from your side will fail?"