and only a few specks
appeared on the horizon, to remain for a time, and vanish.

Meanwhile Florrie worried Denman with questions that he could not
answer.

"Forsythe took sights in the morning," he explained at length, "and a
meridian observation at noon. He has undoubtedly found another 'pocket,'
as I call these triangular spaces between the routes; but I do not know
where we are, except that, computing our yesterday and last night's run,
we are within from sixty to a hundred miles of New York."

He was further mystified when, on going into his room for a cigar after
supper, he found his suit of "citizen's clothes" missing from its hook.

"Not the same thief," he grumbled. "Sampson and Jenkins are too big for
it."

He did not mention his loss to Florrie, not wishing to arouse further
feminine speculation; and when, at a later hour in this higher latitude,
darkness had come, and full speed was rung to the engine room, he
induced her to retire.

"I don't know what's up," he said; "but--get all the sleep you can. I'll
call you if anything happens."

He did not go to sleep himself, but smoked and waited while the humming
turbines gathered in the miles--one hour, two hours, nearly three--until
a quarter to eleven o'clock, when speed was reduced.

Remembering his embarrassment of the morning, Denman did not seek the
deck, but looked through his deadlight. Nothing but darkness met his
eye; it was a black night with rain.

He entered the lighted wardroom and looked at the telltale above; it
told him that the boat was heading due north. Then he entered an
opposite room--all were unlocked now--from which, slantingly through the
deadlight, he saw lights. He threw open the thick, round window, and saw
more clearly. Lights, shore lights, ahead and to port.

He saw no land; but from the perspective of the lights he judged that
they ran east and west. Then he heard the call of the lead: "A quarter
seventeen;" and a little later: "By the deep seventeen," delivered in a
sing-song voice by Hawkes.

"The coast of Long Island," muttered Denman. "Well, for picked-up,
school-book navigation, it is certainly a feat--to run over six hundred
miles and stop over soundings."

The boat went on at reduced speed until Hawkes had called out: "By the
mark ten," when the engines stopped, and there was a rush of footsteps
on deck, that centered over the open deadlight, above which was slung to
the davits the boat called by them the ding