only a choppy sea and a black cloud sweeping astern to show the passing of the storm. Everyone, but Morris and I, seemed to be disappointed about it. However, they accepted the inevitable and returned gloomily to their posts, and I went back to the engine room bench. By eight o’clock that night we were off the mouth of the Danube at a place called Sulina Mouth. I had dined and reinforced myself with a cigar, when the captain, with his deprecating gestures and up-turned palms, came down and asked for permission to put in for the night. This would mean a delay of twenty-four hours at least, so I declined flatly. We were already nearly forty-eight hours out of the Bosphorus, and Odessa still a night’s run away, besides the night in port and one day lost. I considered it a very bad precedent. Stomati, who was clearing the dinner table, began to reminisce about a series of wrecks that had occurred between Sulina and Odessa, but after the false alarm snowstorm in the afternoon, I was determined to try the sea, even if it should be rough. “Old Gileti has got cold feet sure,” volunteered Morris, who stood at my elbow as we watched the harbor lights of Sulina fade away beyond our bubbling wake. I was inclined to believe that he was right. The moon was making frantic efforts to break through the clouds, and, though there was a brisk wind blowing, I believed we would have an easy night, and so I turned in, but I never made a worse mistake. About one o’clock I awoke with a realization of that fact. What we had been through before was child’s play. I threw on my coat and got into the dimly lighted saloon. The place looked as though a ten-inch shell had burst. Broken glass, trunks turned upside down, clothes thrown from their hooks, and confusion everywhere. Outside the wind and waves roared like a thousand freight trains. It took me two minutes to get the hatch open against the wind which seemed to be blowing everywhere at once. I could not see my hand before my face, but felt my way along the rail to the engine room skylight, then to the deck-house, pausing to cling tight for the lurches that followed every succeeding dip. It had come off cold, and ice was forming everywhere. I felt the thin coating on bar and brace as I climbed to the bridge deck, and, watching my opportunity, crawled toward the wheel-house, half blinded by the spray which swept the ship from end to end. The noise was too great for conversation, but the grim faces of the men at the wheel bespoke their views of the situation louder than words. They were two strong men, but flung this way and that they were, as they wrestled with the wheel, which spun and jerked under their hands like a live thing, as it answered the writhings of the rudder beaten by the seas that lashed astern. I tried to stand on the bridge, but snow and sleet-like darts of fiery steel bit my face and drove me back for shelter to the wheel-house. Every time we struck a sea the spray rose