My state of mind when I awakened on the following day was indescribable; I found it difficult to doubt that Nayland Smith would meet me on the way to the bathroom as usual, with the cracked briar fuming between his teeth.  I felt myself almost compelled to pass around to his stateroom in order to convince myself that he was not really there.  The catastrophe was still unreal to me, and the world a dream-world.  Indeed I retain scarcely any recollections of the traffic of that day, or of the days that followed it until we reached Port Said.

Two things only made any striking appeal to my dulled intelligence at that time.  These were:  the aloof attitude of Dr. Stacey, who seemed carefully to avoid me; and a curious circumstance which the second officer mentioned in conversation one evening as we strolled up and down the main deck together.

“Either I was fast asleep at my post, Dr. Petrie,” he said, “or last night, in the middle watch, some one or something came over the side of the ship just aft the bridge, slipped across the deck, and disappeared.”

I stared at him wonderingly.

“Do you mean something that came up out of the sea?” I said.

“Nothing could very well have come up out of the sea,” he replied, smiling slightly, “so that it must have come up from the deck below.”

“Was it a man?”

“It looked like a man, and a fairly tall one, but he came and was gone like a flash, and I saw no more of him up to the time I was relieved.  To tell you the truth, I did not report it because I thought I must have been dozing; it’s a dead slow watch, and the navigation on this part of the run is child’s play.”

I was on the point of telling him what I had seen myself, two evenings before, but for some reason I refrained from doing so, although I think had I confided in him he would have abandoned the idea that what he had seen was phantasmal; for the pair of us could not very well have been dreaming.  Some malignant presence haunted the ship; I could not doubt this; yet I remained passive, sunk in a lethargy of sorrow.

We were scheduled to reach Port Said at about eight o’clock in the evening, but by reason of the delay occasioned so tragically, I learned that in all probability we should not arrive earlier than midnight, whilst passengers would not go ashore until the following morning.  Karamaneh who had been staring ahead all day, seeking a first glimpse of her native land, was determined to remain up until the hour of our arrival, but after dinner a notice was posted up that we should not be in before two A.M.  Even those passengers who were the most enthusiastic thereupon determined to postpone, for a few hours, their first glimpse of the land of the Pharaohs and even to forego the sight—­one of the strangest and most interesting in the world—­of Port Said by night.

For my own part, I confess that all the interest and hope with which I had looked forward to our arrival, had left me, and often I detected tears in the eyes of Karamaneh whereby I knew that the coldness in my heart had manifested itself even to her.  I had sustained the greatest blow of my life, and not even the presence of so lovely a companion could entirely recompense me for the loss of my dearest friend.