I have only the vaguest
idea respecting the time whereat the next incident occurred which it
is my duty to chronicle. Perhaps I was on the verge of falling asleep,
seated there as I was; at any rate, I could scarcely believe myself
awake, when, unheralded by any footsteps to indicate his coming, some
one who seemed to be crouching outside my stateroom, slightly raised
himself and peered in through the porthole--which I had not troubled to
close.

He must have been a fairly tall man to have looked in at all, and
although his features were indistinguishable in the darkness, his
outline, which was clearly perceptible against the white boat beyond,
was unfamiliar to me. He seemed to have a small, and oddly swathed head,
and what I could make out of the gaunt neck and square shoulders in some
way suggested an unnatural thinness; in short, the smudgy silhouette in
the porthole was weirdly like that of a mummy!

For some moments I stared at the apparition; then, rousing myself from
the apathy into which I had sunk, I stood up very quickly and stepped
across the room. As I did so the figure vanished, and when I threw open
the door and looked out upon the deck... the deck was wholly untenanted!

I realized at once that it would be useless, even had I chosen the
course, to seek confirmation of what I had seen from the officer on
the bridge: my own berth, together with the one adjoining--that of the
bishop--was not visible from the bridge.

For some time I stood in my doorway, wondering in a disinterested
fashion which now I cannot explain, if the hidden enemy had revealed
himself to me, or if disordered imagination had played me a trick.
Later, I was destined to know the truth of the matter, but when at last
I fell into a troubled sleep, that night, I was still in some doubt upon
the point.

My state of mind when I awakened on the following day was indescribable;
I found it difficult to doubt that Nayland Smith would meet me on the
way to the bathroom as usual, with the cracked briar fuming between his
teeth. I felt myself almost compelled to pass around to his stateroom in
order to convince myself that he was not really there. The catastrophe
was still unreal to me, and the world a dream-world. Indeed I retain
scarcely any recollections of the traffic of that day, or of the days
that followed it until we reached Port Said.

Two things only made any striking appeal to my dulled intelligence at
that time. These were: the a