He slept heavily on the engineer's settee. He had told that obliging person to give him a call at midnight--he wanted to see what the Old Man was up to. The Old Man, however, later gave Mr. Cassar explicit orders to let the mate sleep--he would remain on duty himself. The chief felt it incumbent upon him to oblige the captain, and Mr. Spokesly slept on, much disturbed none the less by grotesque and laboured forebodings of his subconscious being, so that he moved restlessly at times, as though some occult power within was striving to rouse him. Indeed, it was the spirit of duty struggling with wearied tissues. It was past three when the former was so far successful as to wrench his eyes open. He started up, stretched, looked at the engineer's clock, and muttered that he must have fallen asleep again. He put on his coat and cap, and taking a hurried glance at the engineer, who was sprawling on his back in his bunk with his mouth open and his fingers clutching the matted growth of black hair on his chest, he hurried out on deck.
The fog was gone, and a high, level canopy of thin clouds gave the night the character of an enormous and perfectly dark chamber. The _Kalkis_ was moving so slowly, Mr. Spokesly could with difficulty keep tally of the beat of the engines. Yet she was moving. He could hear the sough of water, and there was a faint phosphorescence along the ship's side. And a change in the air, an indefinable modification of temperature and possibly smell, led him to examine the near horizon for the deeper blackness of a high shore. He listened intently, trying to detect the sound of waves on the rocks. He tried to figure out what the position would be now, if they had made the course he suspected. They ought to be under the southern shores of Lesbos by now. But if that were the case the cool breeze coming off shore would be on the port side. He listened, sniffed, and resigned himself passively for a moment to the impact of influences so subtle that to one unaccustomed to the sea they might be suspected of supernatural sources. He climbed to the bridge-deck and went over to where the smashed boat hung like a skeleton from the crumpled davit. And he was aware at once of the correctness of his suspicions. But it would not be Lesbos. It was the high land which juts northward and forms the western promontory of the long curving Gulf of Smyrna. He could see it as an intenser and colder projection of the darkness. And then his curiosity centred about the more complex problem of speed. They could not be doing more than a couple of knots. What was the old fraud's game? Waiting for a signal, perhaps. He had evidently got himself and his old ship inside any mines that had been laid between Chios and Lesbos. If there were any. Perhaps he was waiting for daylight.