I heard something scuttling in the darkness. I saw the night-watchman on the _Corydon_ standing at the galley door, looking out. And then, looking again towards my objective, I saw an open door in the shed with a short, broad figure showing up sharply against a brightly illuminated interior. I scrambled up the little incline and found a path. "I was suddenly conscious I had no particular reason for calling upon this unknown person in the middle of the night. It is one of the tragedies of human life that while we do most things by instinct or intuition we have to clamp some 'particular reason' on our actions before we can secure the approbation either of others or of ourselves. Some men, like my young brother, never trouble themselves about it. But all my life I have found myself hesitating upon the edge of actions that might be heroic or fantastic or original or simply desirable, just because I couldn't square them with a particular reason. It was so in this instance. I came into the light of that doorway, and hesitated. But the short, broad figure was not like me. In the most matter-of-fact fashion he nodded his head and said in a clear voice with a strong foreign accent, 'Good evening. How are you?' And I answered at once that I was very well. He gave the cue, the cue which the _Corydon_ had temporarily obliterated from my mind! He stood to one side and let me see into his domain. A large central-draft oil lamp hung in the centre of the roof of a small chamber. There was a door at the back, leading, I surmised, to the boiler room, for in one corner stood the machine that had attracted me from the ship, a curious hunched affair with a violently working apparatus in front and pipes covered with snow curving up and disappearing into the top of it. A small foot-lathe stood by a bench, and on the bench itself was clamped a fret-work table and a partly completed fret-work corner bracket. I wiped my face with my sweat-rag and turned to get a good look at the owner of this variegated display. It seemed to me I was having experiences after all.