nder the pillow and
encountered the reassuring chill of the blued steel. Half withdrawing
this excellent weapon, he shifted his eyes, alternately from the door
to the port-hole, conscious of an imminent danger, a little stupefied
by his recent plunge into the depths of sleep, but growing more widely
awake, more alert and watchful, with the passage of each instant.

The port-hole loomed gray and empty, one edge of it licked by the
yellow light of some not far distant deck-lamp. With his eye fastened
upon this scimitar of golden light, Peter was soon to witness an
unusual eclipse, a phenomenon which sent a shiver, an icy shiver, of
genuine consternation up and down his backbone.

As he watched, a square of the yellow reflected light was blotted out,
as though a bar of some nature had cast its shadow athwart that
metallic gleam. This shadow then proceeded to slide first up and then
down the brass setting of the port-hole, and the shadow dwindled.

As Peter sat up on the edge of his cot, gripping the square butt of the
automatic in his hand and tentatively fingering the trigger, the origin
of the shadow moved slowly, ever so slowly, into the range of his
perplexed and anxious vision.

What appeared at first glance to be a cat-o'-nine-tails on a rather
thick stem, Peter made out to be, as he built some hasty comparisons,
the Maxim silencer attached either at the end of a revolver or of a
rifle; for the black cylinder on the muzzle was circumscribed at
regular intervals with small, sharp depressions, the clinch-marks of
the silencing chambers.

As this specter crept up and over the edge of the port, Peter, with a
deliberate and cold smile, raised the automatic revolver, slipped out
of the berth with the stealth and litheness of a cat, crept into the
corner where the stateroom door was hinged, and leveled the weapon
until his eye ran along the dark obstruction of the barrel.

Slowly and more slowly the silencer moved inward until the blunt end of
it was registered precisely upon a point where Peter's head would lie
if he were sleeping in a normal attitude.

This amused him and perplexed him. All Peter wanted to see was the
head or even the eye of this early morning assassin, whereupon he would
take immediate steps to receive him with a warm cordiality that might
forestall future visitations of a kindred sort.

In the space between heart-beats Peter stopped to inquire of himself
who his visitor might be. And even