"Are you from Uselin?" she asked, while I arranged the plate.
"No," I muttered, about to take a hasty departure.
"But you speak our Platt." she said quickly, and looked sharply at me with a surprised expression.
I felt that the coating of soot on my cheeks must be very thick indeed to hide the flush which I felt burning in my cheeks.
"Ship in sight!" suddenly shouted the man at the foretop.
An immense dark mass loomed out of the gray fog. A feeling of terror, not for myself, seized me. I, too, shouted with my whole strength, "Ship in sight!" and following an impulse which flashed upon me like lightning, I bounded across the deck to the hatch leading to the engine-room, while the captain upon the paddle-box was shouting through his trumpet like mad--"Stop her! Back her!" an order which evidently was not obeyed, for the boat rushed through the water with undiminished speed.
How I got down the steep ladder I do not know. I only know that I flung the drunken engineer out of the way, pushed the lever to the other side, and simultaneously threw open the throttle-valve and let on the full head of steam.
A mighty shock followed, making the whole boat quiver as it struggled in the waves, produced by the reversed wheels. The push I had given him, and, perhaps still more the violent jar of the boat, had awakened the drunken engineer. In his confusion he rushed upon me like a madman to force me from my post, so that I defended myself against him with difficulty.
It was a terrible moment. Every instant I expected to feel the crash of the collision.
But a minute passed, and with it passed the danger, for I knew that by this time the collision must have taken place, if we had not escaped it: and now resounded through the speaking-trumpet the order, "Stop her!"