What did I expect to happen? I hardly knew. Vague fancies, most of them wildly improbable, flitted through my brain. But one thing I was firmly convinced of, at one o’clock something would happen.

At various times, I heard my fellow-passengers coming to bed. Fragments of conversation, laughing good nights, floated in through the open transom. Then, silence. Most of the lights went out. There was still one in the passage outside, and there was therefore a certain amount of light in my cabin. I heard eight bells go. The hour that followed seemed the longest I had ever known. I consulted my watch surreptitiously to be sure I had not overshot the time.

If my deductions were wrong, if nothing happened at one o’clock, I should have made a fool of myself, and spent all the money I had in the world on a mare’s nest. My heart beat painfully.