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The oil-lamp of the cabin, after a short sleep, would wake, and move uneasily in its gimbals. Its smoky glim was barely enough to fill the hollow with light, though the room was small, so the long shadow over the head of the settee might have been either a man or a hat and coat dangling from a peg; for, in sympathy with the movements of the swinging lamp, and the water in the bottle which sloped unnaturally first this way and then that, the limp coat came feebly to life now and then, and rubbed weakly over the cabin wall. It was reconciled to the perpendicular again when it found its tether would allow it no more freedom. There was no sound, except a suggestion that the night outside was a tide pouring headlong forever between the stars; but there was a tremor in the cabin, as of a dance of all its atoms, and a profound murmuring, which might have been the humming of an asteroid asleep with the speed of its rotation in space. An open book on a table beside the bunk, responsive to the dance of the atoms, was now projected over the edge, and was on the point of toppling over. The heavy brass handle of the door suddenly made frantic efforts to come off, and then the door opened, and the light flattened in a cold rush of night. The book fell. When the lamp flame stood upright in the quiet again, Sinclair was there, looking down on Colet. Jimmy continued asleep in his bunk with the calm abandon of the joys and woes of earth shown by the image of a crusader in his niche in a church. The sailor grinned, and was about to go, when the sleeper opened his eyes. The formidable figure he saw filling an unfamiliar and unescapable space, giant in its glistening oilskins, brought him up on the point of leaping out to meet the monstrous adversary of a dream.

“Eight bells,” said the sailor, “and all’s well. I just popped in to see how you were taking it.”

Colet sank back in a release to ease. “Where are we now?”

“Mind your own business. Do you want this book? What a dirty light you’ve got, though. Won’t it do any better? But this ship wasn’t fixed for comfort; only for cargo and sailors.”