"That is so," I replied, "but I could not reach a quarter of the distance that separates his port-hole from mine, and I have nothing in my cabin to assist me. But we must think it over and see what can be done. Now we had better begin to pace the deck again, or they may grow suspicious." With that we set out, and for upwards of an hour religiously patrolled the poop. At the end of that time we were ordered below, and when my cabin door was locked upon me, I sat myself down on my locker and put my brains to work. The first point to be decided, as I have said above, was how we were to communicate with the others; the second and all important, was to find a means of escape from the doom that had been prepared for us. At last, my head in a whirl, I turned into bed and endeavoured to divert my mind from the burden it carried. The attempt was useless, however, as may be easily understood. Think of what I would, my thoughts invariably came back to the same subject. I recalled that night in Paris, when the eyes of the woman we had known as the Countess de Venetza had exercised such a strange effect upon me. I remembered the nameless horror they had inspired in me, and the sleepless nights I had had in consequence. I also recalled our first meeting and our crossing to London together. Who would have dreamt then that that meeting would have ended in this terrible fashion? Hour by hour the night wore on until the faint, weird light of dawn crept into the sky. We might now say that _to-morrow_ we should know our fate. Then, tired of tumbling and tossing in my bunk, I left it, and stood at the open port-hole, watching the great, grey waves go by. There was a fair sea running, and, in consequence, the steamer was rolling heavily. "If only I could find some means of communicating with Castellan," I said to myself for the hundredth time. "He and Woller might put their wits to work, and possibly hit upon a scheme that would save us." Then, in a flash, as is generally the way, an idea occurred to me. If I were permitted a chance of carrying it out, it was quite within the bounds of possibility that it might succeed.