“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, who had clambered up, and was looking over the after-rail. “What?” “Fish!” Lestrange rose to his feet, came aft and looked over the rail. Down in the vague green of the water something moved, something pale and long—a ghastly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared the surface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, he saw the dark fin, and the whole hideous length of the creature; a shudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky. “Ain’t he fine?” said the child. “I guess, daddy, I’d pull him aboard if I had a hook. Why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—why haven’t I a hook, daddy?— Ow, you’re _squeezin’_ me!” Something plucked at Lestrange’s coat: it was Emmeline—she also wanted to look. He lifted her up in his arms; her little pale face peeped over the rail, but there was nothing to see: the forms of terror had vanished, leaving the green depths untroubled and unstained. “What’s they called, daddy?” persisted Dick, as his father took him down from the rail, and led him back to the chair. “Sharks,” said Lestrange, whose face was covered with perspiration. He picked up the book he had been reading—it was a volume of Tennyson—and he sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlit main-deck barred with the white shadows of the standing rigging. The sea had disclosed to him a vision. Poetry, Philosophy, Beauty, Art, the love and joy of life—was it possible that these should exist in the same world as those? He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautiful things in it which he remembered with the terrible things he had just seen, the things that were waiting for their food under the keel of the ship. It was three bells—half-past three in the afternoon—and the ship’s bell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the children below; and as they vanished down the saloon companion-way Captain Le Farge came aft, on to the poop, and stood for a moment looking over the sea on the port side, where a bank of fog had suddenly appeared like the spectre of a country. “The sun has dimmed a bit,” said he; “I can a’most look at it. Glass steady enough—there’s a fog coming up—ever seen a Pacific fog?” “No, never.” “Well, you won’t want to see another,” replied the mariner, shading his eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboard had lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almost imperceptible shade had crept. The captain suddenly turned from his contemplation of the sea and sky, raised his head and sniffed. “Something is burning somewhere—smell it? Seems to me like an old mat or summat. It’s that swab of a steward, maybe; if he isn’t breaking glass, he’s upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless _my_ soul, I’d sooner have a dozen Mary Anns an’ their dustpans round the place than one tomfool steward like Jenkins.” He went to the saloon hatch. “Below there!” “Ay, ay, sir.” “What are you burning?”