I went to my room, and saw through Fred's open door that he had climbed into his berth, and was already asleep. I still had an hour of my watch below, and to steady my mind got out the "Epitome" and a pad of paper, to figure out a few problems in navigation. And now my sick roommate made a sound; his speech was returning, though it was not yet articulate. Yet he made me understand by his grimaces and gestures that he wanted the pad of paper. I understood at last, and gave him both pad and pencil. He wrote, and I read, as follows: "On the night of the fire he filled the empty fire extinguisher with whiskey from a keg, and has tippled ever since." I nodded my understanding of his message; and, going over to Fred's room, lifted the fire extinguisher off its hook, and shook it. It was empty. I hung it up, and went back. "He's used it up," I said, to the dumb brute, who, caught foul in a wrestling trick beyond his comprehension, hated his enemy more than I did. He smiled and closed his eyes. He felt, no doubt, that his revenge was nearly due. I had the deck during the first watch that night, and heard no sounds from below. No doubt, Fred slept soundly. At midnight, I called the skipper, and went down. Fred was quiet, and my roommate asleep, so I turned in, hoping for a few hours of sleep. But it was denied me. I wakened in an hour, frenzied with fear of the _thing_ that was pursuing me, and as consciousness came to me I heard Fred's mutterings. Then I saw him, through the opened doors, rise from his berth, and approach the empty fire extinguisher. He lifted the empty flask, put the tube to his lips, then hung it up, and crept into his berth. His mutterings became words, his words oaths and maledictions, which soon took on the nature of screams and shrieks. I turned out, and examined him. He was sitting up, waving his hands toward the fire extinguisher, hanging on its hook near the door. "What ails you?" I demanded. "What do you see now?" "Oh, Jim, Jim!" he gasped. "Drive it away! See it! There on the bed!" I grasped an imaginary dragon at his feet, and flung it out. "There, it's gone," I said soothingly. "All right, now?" His answer was a scream. "But that--that--_that_!" he choked. "That thing without legs, or eyes, or mouth. There--there! See it! Take it away!" He was looking at the fire extinguisher. It was a cylindrical tube about two feet long and six inches in diameter. I looked at it, and suddenly there came to my mind the physical resemblance to the weird and uncanny _thing_ that had tormented me in my dreams. Not knowing that I was right, yet obeying a sympathetic impulse, born of my own dream terrors, I took the innocent cylinder off its hook, and said: "I will throw it overboard, and drown it. It will never come back."