Bligh could not imagine why any midshipman should want to enter a discipline officer's room; it was certain no midshipman had a right to be in that office except to see Lieutenant-Commander Brooks on duty. Blunt was committing a serious offense in being in the room. This did not worry Bligh at all, but he was completely puzzled.
"What can Blunt be doing in there?" he asked himself again and again. He listened intently and heard Blunt moving about; and then he heard a noise as if a chair were being moved and had knocked against something. Looking up through the transom he saw it was all dark within; Blunt had not turned on any light.
Bligh now entered his own room, which was next to the one that Blunt had entered, and where Bligh now lived alone without a roommate. With a puzzled mind he drew a chair to his window, and thought and wondered. His imagination could not help him. He had been in the office next door and knew it contained nothing but a desk, a table, two chairs and a midshipman wardrobe where Lieutenant-Commander Brooks could hang a coat if he were so disposed.
Bligh sat by his window, his mind full of Harry Blunt. The soft moonlight streamed into his room. And then Bligh was startled by hearing a noise in the room next door, as if a window were being raised. Straining his eyes he looked out from his window, and in the next instant he saw the dark figure of a man creep out on the passageway leading from the window of the office to the terrace.
The man turned to his left, and with the bright moonlight full on his face Bligh got a good look at him, but did not recognize him. The man wore a slouch hat, sack coat, and had a moustache and full beard.
The dark figure stole over to the terrace and soon disappeared.
"Now I understand," cried Bligh to himself. "Blunt had an appointment with some 'cit' and they met in the room next door. He's up to something, and I'll see that he gets reported for this, and I hope it will bilge him."
Bligh now opened the door of his room and looked out, expecting every moment to see Harry Blunt emerge from the office. Bligh was thoughtful for a while, then he took a spool of black linen thread from a drawer in his wardrobe. He tied one end of the thread to the door-knob of the office and carried the thread overhead through the open transom of his room. He then sat in the chair by the window holding the thread hauled taut; and Bligh sat there for the next two hours, thread in hand.