“There,” he thought, “I feel easier after taking that precaution. One never knows what may happen, and there is too much at stake to permit it to depend entirely on my safety. I wonder what makes me feel so uneasy. I don’t think I have done anything to betray myself. And yet I have a strange foreboding of coming ill. Shall I ever see old England again? Just now I have my doubts. Throwing that bottle into the sea was the first outcome of the new feeling of dread which has come over me, and even if ill comes to me before we reach Malta, there is the chance of Harley being rescued after all, for the first person who picks the bottle up will examine and report upon its contents. I once read of a castaway bottle floating about two years--sent hither and thither, caught first by one current, and then by another--before it was finally washed ashore. God grant that Harley may not have to wait two years for his deliverance.” While he was thus musing in a depressed mood that struck him as uncanny and unaccountable, considering the information that he had gained, the steward of the “Merry Maid” prepared himself for bed, for he had to rise early next morning. Had he but cast his tired eyes up to the little peephole which overlooked the next berth, he would have noticed something which would have alarmed him. The hole being unprotected, the light from his oil lamp had betrayed him. The captain had retired for the night, but found sleep to be in too fitful and fleetsome a mood to benefit him. The fact that he was richer by at least a thousand pounds than he was a day or two ago had set his imagination going, and he was in fancy entering into all sorts of plans for doubling his capital. Towards one o’clock, he was dozing off, when a slight noise awoke him. Some people are easily aroused by any unexpected sound. Captain Cochrane was one of these people. There is hardly any time so quiet at sea in a merchant ship as one o’clock in the morning. All hands not on watch are in bed, and those who are on watch content themselves with doing their duty. Supplementary caperings or promenadings are deferred until a more seasonable time. This being the case, we can understand how it was that Captain Cochrane was on the alert at once when the sound of a splash in the water close to his port fell on his startled ears. For a moment he lay wondering whether someone had fallen overboard or not. Then, just as he came to the conclusion that the splash was hardly loud enough to account for a cat falling into the water, he noticed something else that surprised him. Just opposite his face, as he sat up in his bunk, there was a small round patch of light. He had no light burning in his berth. Whence came this illumination of a spot to which no light for which he could account could penetrate? He must find out. With Captain Cochrane, to resolve was usually to do. It did not take him long to discover William Trace’s secret.