While Miss Abbey partly delivered these directions to Bob⁠—whom she seized by the hair, and whose head she knocked against the wall, as a general injunction to vigilance and presence of mind⁠—and partly hailed the kitchen with them⁠—the company in the public room, jostling one another, rushed out to the causeway, and the outer noise increased.

“Come and look,” said Miss Abbey to her visitors. They all three hurried to the vacated public room, and passed by one of the windows into the wooden verandah overhanging the river.

“Does anybody down there know what has happened?” demanded Miss Abbey, in her voice of authority.

“It’s a steamer, Miss Abbey,” cried one blurred figure in the fog.

“It always is a steamer, Miss Abbey,” cried another.