At first it seemed as if nothing would ever happen again. There were no electric lights on the _Kalkis_, although she had a very fine dynamo in her engine-room, because one of her engineers in time past had cut away all the wiring and sold it. The donkey-boiler fire was banked and the donkey man gone ashore. She swung at anchor in absolute silence. The launch was half a mile away. Over the Vardar valley was a glare as of distant conflagrations, and along the front shore the sparkling entrances of the palaces of pleasure from which Mr. Spokesly had just come. He went down and unlocked the door of his cabin. It was much cleaner than it had been for years, but smelled of new paint. He opened the scuttles, hooked back the door, and lit the brass gimbal-lamp. His tin trunk was stowed under the bed-place. Clean fresh canvas was on the floor and a rag mat by the bunk. A piece of lilac-tinted toilet soap, which is almost indispensable in an English guest room. A clean towel, which he had bought himself at Stein's. The next room was a bathroom, but it was not yet in an entirely satisfactory condition. It had been used to keep chickens in at some time and had also served as a store for the steward. And fresh water had to be carried from the pump, as all the plumbing had been cut away and sold. Well, it would do. Mr. Spokesly opened the trunk and began to lay the contents in different drawers. He did it clumsily, as a matter of course, so that things of silk and cotton were crumpled and twisted, and he regarded his results dubiously. He decided he would be a failure as a lady's maid, and lighting a cigarette ascended to the deck. A fine thing, he reflected, if she never came and he had all those fal-lals and frills to carry about the ocean! There seemed to be no one on board. And it suddenly occurred to him that this might be an actual fact. He looked into the galley and found no one there. He walked forward to the bridge-deck rail and blew his whistle. Presently up from below, and framed in the doorway of the scuttle, appeared an alarming phenomenon. Its hair stood in conflicting directions, a large moustache cut across between two round black eyes and a red mouth full of yellow teeth, one cheek was covered thickly with lather, and the other, already shaved, was smeared with blood. "What's the matter?" said the bosun. "Where's the watchman?" asked Mr. Spokesly. "He's down here talking to me." "What are you doing, shaving?" "Of course I am. What did you think I was doing? Cutting my throat?" "Looks damn like it," muttered Mr. Spokesly, and sauntered away aft to look at the shore. The indignant apparition in the forecastle scuttle gradually sank from view like the phantoms in old-fashioned grand opera, and was replaced by a lumbering creature in a blue jersey, with curling blond hair, and carrying a bucket of soap-suds. Mr. Spokesly heard him, presently, banging about in the galley.