rity 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 awakening 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 open porthole 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:

"Dr. Petrie! Dr. Petrie!"

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 neighbor; but somebody seems to be trying to
get a message, presumably urgent, through to you."

"To me!" I cried.

"I cannot make it out," admitted Platts, running his fingers through
disheveled 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 burned redly beneath the
peaceful vault of the heavens. Platts nodded absently in the direction
of the weird flames.

"Stromboli," he said; "we shall be nearly through the Straits by
breakfast-time."

We mounted the narrow stair to the Marconi deck. At the table sat
Platts' assistant with the Marconi attachment upon his head--an
apparatus which always set me thinking of the electric chair.

"Have you got it?" demanded my companion as we entered the room.

"It's still coming through," replied the other without moving, "but in
the same jerky fashion. Every time I get it, it seems to have gone back
to the beginning--just Dr. Petrie--Dr. Petrie."