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"The pot is in the galley" Le Mat spoke without turning, his hands loosely gripped on the wheel, his gaze straight ahead "Please help yourself I have to keep a sharp eye for ice floes They're thicker than flies on manure this time of year"

Pitt poured a steah swivel chair and looked out at the river Le Mat was right

The water was littered with ice floes about the same size as the boat

"What was it like the night the E the silence

"Clear skies," Le Mat answered "The river was cal, no wind to speak of A few patches of fog, co when the southern warm air meets the cold river"

"The Eood ship?"

"One of the best" Le Mat replied seriously to what he considered a naive question "Built to the finest standards of the day for her owners, the Canadian Pacific Railway She and her sister ship, the Empress of Britain, were handsome liners, fourteen thousand, tons and five hundred and fifty feet long Their accoant, perhaps, as those on the Olympic or the Mauritania, but they achieved a solid reputation for providing their passengers with a co"

"As I recall, the Ee"

"Cast thelines close to four thirty in the afternoon Nine hours later she lay on the river botto that wrote the ship's epitaph"

"And a coal collier called the Storstad" Le Mat smiled "You've done your homework, Mr Pitt The mystery was never completely laid to rest how the Ehted each other eight miles apart When they were separated by less than twobank drifted across their path Captain Kendall, ines and-stopped the ship It was a mistake; he should have kept underway The men in the wheelhouse on the Storstad becaht the liner was approaching off their port bohen indeed, it was drifting with engines stopped to their starboard The Storstad's first ht and the Eers were condemned to disaster"

Le Mat paused to point at an ice floe nearly an acre in size "We had an unseasonably cold winter this year The river is still frozen solid a hundred and fifty miles upstream"

Pitt kept silent, slowly sipping the tea

"The six-thousand-ton Storstad," Le Mat continued, "laden with eleven thousand tons of coal, cut into the Eh and fifteen feet wide Within fourteen minutes the E over a thousand souls with her"

"Strange how quickly the ship vanished into the past," Pitt said pensively

"Yes, you ask anyone from the States or Europe about the Empress and they'll tell you they never heard of her It's alotten"