When I awoke I was still heavy with sleep, the heaviness of a man who has slept for a long time. My watch said 9:30, and I knew it must be the next morning, not the same evening: I had been asleep for fifteen hours.

The cabin was quite dark. I rose, fumbled for the light switch, found it, and looked around. Neither Hansen nor the engineer officer was there; they must have come in after I had gone to sleep and left before I woke up. I looked around some more and then I listened. I was suddenly conscious of the almost complete quiet, the stillness, the entire lack of any perceptible motion. I might have been in the bedroom of my own house. What had gone wrong? What hold-up had occurred? Why in God's name weren't we under way? I'd have sworn the previous night that Commander Swanson had been just as conscious of the urgency as I had been.

I had a quick wash in the folding Pullman-type basin, passed up the need for a shave, pulled on shirt, trousers and shoes, and — went outside. A few feet away a door opened to starboard off the passage. I went along and walked in. The officers' wardroom, without a doubt, with one of them still at breakfast, slowly munching his way through a huge plateful of steak, eggs and French fries, glancing at a magazine in a leisurely fashion and giving every impression of a man enjoying life to the luxurious full. He was about my own age, big, inclined to fat — a common condition, I was to find, among the entire crew, who ate so well and exercised so little — with close-cropped black hair already graying at the temples, and a cheeful, intelligent face. He caught sight of me, rose and stretched out a hand.