'One of the craft was sunk.'
'Which?'
'Don't know, sir, precisely.'
'Were any drowned?'
'Some o' course, sir—a young woman, for one.'
'A young lady?' gasped Bevil.
'Can't say, sir—coming, sir!' he added, in reply to a voice that hailed from near the rudder-case; 'whisky grogs for two—flash o' lightning and gin cock-tail for the two American gents,' he added to his assistant; while Goring betook himself to the little cuddy on deck, and sat there with a very benumbed and stunned feeling about him; while once more the vibration of the vessel and the everlasting 'Hard-a-port—Starboard—steady' announced that the steamer was again under way; that the fog had lifted; and that she was gliding up the waters of the Scheldt, on each side of which not a vestige of the flat shore was visible as yet.
All inclination to sleep had departed from Bevil Goring; yet he was very weary, and a year seemed to have elapsed since he threw off his uniform and donned mufti at Aldershot, and had seen the green and red lights of Harwich Pier fade into the sea.
Trees that seemed to grow amid the water, fringes of low willow-clad banks, distant spires and windmills began to peep up on either hand in the grey light of the morning, and the earlier part of noon was creeping on, when, long before they were near the city of Antwerp, the spire of its glorious cathedral, one of the finest specimens of Gothic architecture in Europe, the carving of which is like Mechlin lace, and which Charles V. said was so delicate in its workmanship that it would require a case to preserve it, seemed to start sheer from the surface of the water—a curious effect produced by the immensity of its height, which, as it towers skywards, dwarfs to toys the really lofty houses that cluster round it.
On past the green sloping glacis and grassy embrasures of the citadel—one of the strongest in Europe—glided the steamer. As she did so, Goring could little foresee a remarkable morning, an episode in his own life, he was to spend on the ramparts of that Belgian fortress. Nearer she drew to the shore, with its quaint houses of the Middle Ages, all crow-stepped gables and curious windows; nearer to the wharves, where lay piles of goods coming from or going to every part of the world; and now, dockmen, porters, hotel-touts, and wharfingers began to rush hurriedly, to and fro, while gendarmes in blue, with rifle and sword, smoked their cigarettes, looking placidly on; and Bevil Goring did so as one in a dream.