He crept into his berth in a dazed and blundering way, like a fly that has just crawled out of a honey pot. After an hour of feverish tossing from side to side he sank into a doze, only to dream of the bald-headed man in Harrods' who wanted to sell him a safety waistcoat, the exact model of the one that saved Lord Winchelsea. The most hideous series of nightmares followed. He dreamed that the sides of the ship were transparent, and that he saw the periscopes of innumerable submarines foaming alongside through the black water. He could not cry out, though he was the only soul aboard that saw them, for his mouth seemed to be fastened with official sealing wax—black sealing wax—stamped with the German eagle. Then to his horror he saw the quick phosphorescent lines of a dozen torpedoes darting toward the Hispaniola from all points of the compass. A moment later there was an explosion that made him leap, gasping and fighting for breath, out of his berth. But this was not a dream. It was the most awful explosion he had ever heard, and his room stank of sulphur. He seized the cork jacket that hung on his wall, pulled his door open and rushed out, trying to fasten it round him as he went.
When the steward arrived, with the purser, they had the stateroom to themselves; and after the former had thrown the remains of the rocket through the porthole, together with the ingenious contrivance that had prevented it from doing any real damage under Mr. Neilsen's berth, the purser helped him with his own hands to carry the brass-bound trunk down to his office.
"We'll tell him that his room was on fire and we had to throw the contents overboard. We'll give him another room and a suit of old clothes for to-morrow. Then we can examine his possessions at leisure. We've got the code now; but there may be lots of other things in his pockets. That's right. I hope he doesn't jump overboard in his fright. It's lucky that we warned these other staterooms. It made a hellish row. You'd better go and look for him as soon as we get this thing out of the way."
But it was easier to look for Mr. Neilsen than to find him. The steward ransacked the ship for three-quarters of an hour, and he began to fear that the worst had happened. He was peering round anxiously on the boat deck when he heard an explosive cough somewhere over his head. He looked up into the rigging as if he expected to find Mr. Neilsen in the crosstrees; but nobody was to be seen, except the watch in the crow's nest, dark against the stars.
"Mr. Neilsen!" he called. "Mr. Neilsen!"
"Are you galling me?" a hoarse voice replied. It seemed to come out of the air, above and behind the steward. He turned with a start, and a moment later he beheld the head of Mr. Neilsen bristling above the thwarts of Number Six boat. He had been sitting in the bottom of the boat to shelter himself from the wind, and some symbolistic Puck had made him fasten his cork jacket round his pyjamas very firmly, but upside down, so that he certainly would have been drowned if he had been thrown into the water.
"It's all right, Mr. Neilsen," said the steward. "The danger is over."
"Are ve torpedoed?" The round-eyed visage with the bristling hair was looking more and more like Bismarck after a debauch of blood and iron, and it did not seem inclined to budge.
"No, sir! The shock damaged your room a little, but we must have left the enemy behind. You had a lucky escape, sir."
"My Gott! I should think so, indeed! The ship is not damaged in any vay?"