urgent, was crying my name.

Through the open porthole the moonlight streamed into my room, and
save for a remote and soothing throb, inseparable from the progress of
a great steamship, nothing else disturbed the stillness; I might have
floated lonely upon the bosom of the Mediterranean. But there was the
drumming on the door again, and the urgent appeal:

"Dr. Petrie! Dr. Petrie!"

I threw off the bedclothes and stepped on to the floor of the cabin,
fumbling hastily for my slippers. A fear that something was amiss,
that some aftermath, some wraith of the dread Chinaman, was yet to
come to disturb our premature peace, began to haunt me. I threw open
the door.

Upon the gleaming deck, blackly outlined against a wondrous sky, stood
a man who wore a blue greatcoat over his pyjamas, and whose
unstockinged feet were thrust into red slippers. It was Platts, the
Marconi operator.

"I'm awfully sorry to disturb you, Dr. Petrie," he said, "and I was
even less anxious to arouse your neighbor; but somebody seems to be
trying to get a message, presumably urgent, through to you."

"To me!" I cried.

"I cannot make it out," admitted Platts, running his fingers through
disheveled hair, "but I thought it better to arouse you. Will you come
up?"