Some time after, supine again upon his bed, he heard Mr. Swain in the saloon querulously interrogating one of the stewards.  It appeared that Mr. Swain had unaccountably mislaid his keys, and he wanted to know if the steward had seen anything of them.  The steward hadn’t, he said; and Lanyard for one knew that he spake sooth, since at that moment the missing keys were resting on the bottom of the sea several miles astern—­all but one.

There was no dressing for dinner that night.  Liane Delorme, her nerves rasped almost beyond endurance by the relentless fog signal, preferred the seclusion of her stateroom.  Lanyard wasn’t really sorry; the bosom of a white shirt is calculated to make some impression upon the human retina even on the darkest night; whereas his plain lounge suit of blue serge was sure to prove entirely inconspicuous.  So, if he missed the feminine influence at table, he bore up with good fortitude.

And after dinner he segregated himself as usual in his favourite chair near the taffrail.  The fog, if anything denser than before, manufactured an early dusk of a peculiarly depressing violet shade.  Nevertheless, evenings are long in that season of the year, and to Lanyard it seemed that the twilight would never quite fade out completely, true night would never come.

Long before it did, speed was slackened:  the yacht was at last in soundings; the calls of the leadsmen were as monotonous as the whistle blasts, and almost as frequent.  Lanyard could have done without both, if the ship could not.  He remarked a steadily intensified exacerbation of nerves, and told himself he was growing old and no mistake.  He could remember the time when he could have endured a strain of waiting comparable to that which he must suffer now, and have turned never a hair.

How long ago it seemed!...

Another sign that the Sybarite had entered what are technically classified as inland waters, where special rules of the road apply, was to be remarked in the fact that the fog signal was now roaring once each minute, whereas Lanyard had grown accustomed to timing the intervals between the sounding of the ship’s bell, upon which all his interest hung, at the rate of fifteen blasts to the half hour.

If you asked him, once a minute seemed rather too much of a good thing, even in busy lanes of sea traffic.  Still, it was better perhaps than unpremeditated disaster; one was not keen about having the Sybarite ground on a sandbank, pile up on a rock, or dash her brains out against the bulk of another vessel—­before eleven o’clock at earliest.

In retrospect he counted those two hours between dinner and ten-thirty longer than the fortnight which had prefaced them.  So is the heart of man ever impatient when the journey’s-end draws near, though that end be but the beginning, as well, of that longer journey which men call Death.

Lest he betray his impatience by keeping the tips of his cigarette too bright (one never knows when one is not watched) he smoked sparingly.  But on the twenty-eighth blare of the whistle after the ringing of four bells, he drew out his cigarette case and, as the thirtieth raved out, synchronous with two double strokes and a single on brazen metal, he placed a cigarette between his lips.