He was further mystified when, on going into his room for a cigar after supper, he found his suit of "citizen's clothes" missing from its hook.
"Not the same thief," he grumbled. "Sampson and Jenkins are too big for it."
He did not mention his loss to Florrie, not wishing to arouse further feminine speculation; and when, at a later hour in this higher latitude, darkness had come, and full speed was rung to the engine room, he induced her to retire.
"I don't know what's up," he said; "but—get all the sleep you can. I'll call you if anything happens."
He did not go to sleep himself, but smoked and waited while the humming turbines gathered in the miles—one hour, two hours, nearly three—until a quarter to eleven o'clock, when speed was reduced.
Remembering his embarrassment of the morning, Denman did not seek the deck, but looked through his deadlight. Nothing but darkness met his eye; it was a black night with rain.
He entered the lighted wardroom and looked at the telltale above; it told him that the boat was heading due north. Then he entered an opposite room—all were unlocked now—from which, slantingly through the deadlight, he saw lights. He threw open the thick, round window, and saw more clearly. Lights, shore lights, ahead and to port.
He saw no land; but from the perspective of the lights he judged that they ran east and west. Then he heard the call of the lead: "A quarter seventeen;" and a little later: "By the deep seventeen," delivered in a sing-song voice by Hawkes.
"The coast of Long Island," muttered Denman. "Well, for picked-up, school-book navigation, it is certainly a feat—to run over six hundred miles and stop over soundings."
The boat went on at reduced speed until Hawkes had called out: "By the mark ten," when the engines stopped, and there was a rush of footsteps on deck, that centered over the open deadlight, above which was slung to the davits the boat called by them the dinghy, but which was only a very small gasoline launch.