"I slept very well, thank you, madam." replied the captain. "I always do." "Well, I hope your room was more comfortable than mine. It seemed to me too hot for anything. Didn't you find it so, Mrs. Digby?" "I thought it very nice," replied the lady at the captain's right, who generally found it necessary to take an opposite view from the lady at the left. "You see," said the captain, "we have many delicate women and children on board and it is necessary to keep up the temperature. Still, perhaps the man who attends to the steam rather overdoes it. I will speak him." Then the captain pushed from him his untasted food and went up on the bridge, casting his eye aloft at the signal waving from the masthead, silently calling for help to all the empty horizon. "Nothing in sight, Johnson?" said the captain. "Not a speck, sir." The captain swept the circular line of sea and sky with his glasses, then laid them down with a sigh. "We ought to raise something this afternoon, sir," said Johnson; "we are right in their track, sir. The Fulda ought to be somewhere about." "We are too far north for the Fulda, I am afraid," answered the captain. "Well, sir, we should see the Vulcan before night, sir. She's had good weather from Queenstown." "Yes. Keep a sharp lookout, Johnson." "Yes, sir." The captain moodily paced the bridge with his head down. "I ought to have turned back to New York," he said to himself. Then he went down to his own room, avoiding the passengers as much as he could, and had the steward bring him some beef-tea. Even a captain cannot live on anxiety. "Steamer off the port bow, sir," rang out the voice of the lookout at the prow. The man had sharp eyes, for a landsman could have seen nothing. "Run and tell the captain," cried Johnson to the sailor at his elbow, but as the sailor turned the captain's head appeared up the stairway. He seized the glass and looked long at a single point in the horizon. "It must be the Vulcan," he said at last. "I think so, sir." "Turn your wheel a few points to port and bear down on her." Johnson gave the necessary order and the great ship veered around. "Hello!" cried Spinner, on deck. "Here's a steamer. I found her. She's mine." Then there was a rush to the side of the ship. "A steamer in sight!" was the cry, and all books and magazines at once lost interest. Even the placid, dignified Englishman who was so uncommunicative, rose from his chair and sent his servant for his binocular. Children were held up and told to be careful, while they tried to see the dim line of smoke so far ahead. "Talk about lane routes at sea," cried young Spinner, the knowing. "Bosh, I say. See! we're going directly for her. Think what it might be in a fog! Lane routes! Pure luck, I call it." "Will we signal to her, Mr. Spinner?" gently asked the young lady from Boston. "Oh, certainly," answered young Spinner. "See there's our signal flying from the masthead now. That shows them what line we belong to."