The door hung on a hook that held it open by the length of a finger; outside swung the lamp that sent light sufficient to me through the interstice. At midnight, this lamp was borne away by Prins, whose final duty before going to his sleeping-place lay in this. It was a regular custom, and whenever it happened that I stayed on deck beyond midnight, then I had to "turn in," as best I could, in the dark. Yet, dark I could not term my cabin at night, 'twas rather "darkness visible," as Milton hath it; for though the glowing crawlings yielded no radiance, no, no more than a mirrored star shining out of the wet blackness of a well, yet such objects as intercepted it, it revealed, as a suspended coat, for instance, that, hanging against the bulkhead, had its figure limned against the phosphor, as though 'twas blotted there in ink, very faithful in outline. There was enough in the events of the evening to keep my brain occupied and my eyes open, and I lay thus for some half-hour, thinking and watching the unnatural lights, and wondering why they should be there, since I had never beheld the like glowing in the most ancient marine structure I had ever visited, when, on a sudden, I was sensible of someone standing outside the cabin door and listening, as it appeared. It was a peculiar, regular breathing sound, that gave me to know this--a respiration as rhythmic as that of a sleeping man whose slumber is peaceful. An instant after I heard the _click_ of the hook of the door lightly lifted out of the staple, but all so quietly that the noise would have been inaudible amid the straining of the rocking vessel if my attention had not been rendered piercing by that solemn and strong breathing, rising very plainly above the sounds in the hold. I sprang on to the deck; being in my socks I fell on my feet noiselessly. Against the greenish glitterings about the cabin I easily made out the figure of a man, standing within the door, holding it in a posture of eager listening. My breath grew thick and short; the horror of this situation is not to be conceived. It was not as though I were in an earthly ship, for in that case, no matter who the midnight intruder, he would have had a mortal throat for my fingers to close upon. But whoever this shape might be he belonged to the Death Ship, and 'twas frightful to see his outline, black as the atmosphere of a churchyard grave, thrown out, in its posture of watching and listening, by the fiery, writhing fibrines of the phosphor, to know that the deep and hollow breathing came from a figure in whom life was a monstrous simulation, to feel that his confrontment by an Hercules or a Goliath would as little quail his endevilled spirit as the dead are to be terrified by the menaces of the living.