My pistol was in my cabin-trunk, and to have found it in the dark, without making a good deal of noise, would have been impossible.  Doubting how I should act, I stood watching the man with the swathed head whilst he threw the end of the ladder over the side, crept past the bow of the boat, and swung his gaunt body over the rail, exhibiting the agility of an ape.  One quick glance fore and aft he gave, then began to swarm down the ladder:  in which instant I knew his mission.

With a choking cry, which forced itself unwilled from my lips, I tore at the door, threw it open, and sprang across the deck.  Plans, I had none, and since I carried no instrument wherewith to sever the ladder, the murderer might indeed have carried out his design for all that I could have done to prevent him, were it not that another took a hand in the game. . . .

At the moment that the mummy-man—­his head now on a level with the deck—­perceived me, he stopped dead.  Coincident with his stopping, the crack of a pistol shot sounded—­from immediately beyond the boat.

Uttering a sort of sobbing sound, the creature fell—­then clutched, with straining yellow fingers, at the rails, and, seemingly by dint of a great effort, swarmed along aft some twenty feet, with incredible swiftness and agility, and clambered onto the deck.

A second shot cracked sharply; and a voice (God! was I mad!) cried:  “Hold him, Petrie!”

Rigid with fearful astonishment I stood, as out from the boat above me leaped a figure attired solely in shirt and trousers.  The newcomer leaped away in the wake of the mummy-man—­who had vanished around the corner by the smoke-room.  Over his shoulder he cried back at me: 

“The bishop’s stateroom!  See that no one enters!”

I clutched at my head—­which seemed to be fiery hot; I realized in my own person the sensation of one who knows himself mad.

For the man who pursued the mummy was Nayland Smith!

* * * * *

I stood in the bishop’s state-room, Nayland Smith, his gaunt face wet with perspiration, beside me, handling certain odd looking objects which littered the place, and lay about amid the discarded garments of the absent cleric.

“Pneumatic pads!” he snapped.  “The man was a walking air-cushion!” He gingerly fingered two strange rubber appliances.  “For distending the cheeks,” he muttered, dropping them disgustedly on the floor.  “His hands and wrists betrayed him, Petrie.  He wore his cuff unusually long but he could not entirely hide his bony wrists.  To have watched him, whilst remaining myself unseen, was next to impossible; hence my device of tossing a dummy overboard, calculated to float for less than ten minutes!  It actually floated nearly fifteen, as a matter of fact, and I had some horrible moments!”

“Smith!” I said—­“how could you submit me . . .”

He clapped his hands on my shoulders.