starboard side, and made my way, blinking like an owl after being so
long in the darkness, into the saloon-cabin, where the passengers were
sitting about, some reading, others working, and where on one side I
found Mr Denning playing chess with his sister.

Everything looked calm, and as if the people were happy enough, and
never thinking it likely there could be any trouble about Captain
Berriman or anything else.

But the saloon-cabin was so warm down there in the south that I soon
went back on deck to hang over the bulwarks for a time, and then go
right aft to look down at the sparkling water, all ablaze now as it
seemed to rush from both sides of the rudder, where in the daytime all
would be white foam.

I had no duty to perform that night to keep me on deck; but still I
lingered, thinking that perhaps the cabin would be terribly hot, as it
had been on the previous night, only I dropped off to sleep so soon that
the heat did not trouble me.

"And I shall have it all to myself to-night," I thought, "for Walters
will have to take his turn in the watch."

At last, half envying him the task of passing a good deal of the night
on deck, I took a look round. The saloon-lights were out, and there was
no one there; the sailing-lights were up in their places, and the faint
glow rose from about the binnacle, just faintly showing the steersman's
face. Away forward I could hear the low murmur of conversation where
the watch were on duty, and now, for the first time, I yawned, and some
one spoke from close behind me and made me start.

"Well," he said, "if you are so drowsy as that, why don't you go to your
bunk?"

"Just going, sir," I said, for it was the first mate, Mr Brymer; and
now I hurried down, threw off my clothes, and in a very few minutes I
was sound asleep.

I suppose it was the heat, for I don't believe that it had anything to
do with the coming danger, but at any rate I slept badly that night--an
uneasy, troubled kind of sleep, such as I should have expected to have
if some one was to come and call me about two bells.

It must have been about that time that I was lying more asleep than
awake, but sufficiently conscious to spring up in my berth and say quite
aloud--

"Yes; what is it?"

There was no reply, though I could have declared that some one called
me. But though there was no reply, I could hear voices. Some one was
giving orders in a sharp, angry voice; and directly after, I could hear
a s