These episodes opened, dramatically upon the second night of the voyage from Marseilles.
I suppose I did not awake very readily. Following the nervous vigilance of the past six months, my tired nerves, in the enjoyment of this relaxation, were rapidly recuperating. I no longer feared to awaken to find a knife at my throat, no longer dreaded the darkness as a foe.
So that the voice may have been calling (indeed, _had_ been calling) for some time, and of this I had been hazily conscious before finally I awoke. Then, ere the new sense of security came to reassure me, the old sense of impending harm set my heart leaping nervously. There is always a certain physical panic attendant upon such awakenings in the still of night, especially in novel surroundings. Now I sat up abruptly, clutching at the rail of my berth and listening.
There was a soft thudding on my cabin door, and a voice, low and urgent, was crying my name.
Through the port-hole the moonlight streamed into my room, and save for a remote and soothing throb, inseparable from the progress of a great steamship, nothing else disturbed the stillness; I might have floated lonely upon the bosom of the Mediterranean. But there was the drumming on the door again, and the urgent appeal:
I threw off the bedclothes and stepped on to the floor of the cabin, fumbling hastily for my slippers. A fear that something was amiss, that some aftermath, some wraith of the dread Chinaman, was yet to come to disturb our premature peace, began to haunt me. I threw open the door.
Upon the gleaming deck, blackly outlined against a wondrous sky, stood a man who wore a blue greatcoat over his pyjamas, and whose unstockinged feet were thrust into red slippers. It was Platts, the Marconi operator.
"I'm awfully sorry to disturb you, Dr. Petrie," he said, "and I was even less anxious to arouse your neighbour; but somebody seems to be trying to get a message, presumably urgent, through to you."
"I cannot make it out," admitted Platts, running his fingers through dishevelled hair, "but I thought it better to arouse you. Will you come up?"
I turned without a word, slipped into my dressing-gown, and with Platts passed aft along the deserted deck. The sea was as calm as a great lake. Ahead, on the port bow, an angry flambeau burnt redly beneath the peaceful vault of the heavens. Platts nodded absently in the direction of the weird flames.