In this way he moved in fits and starts through the maze, as his mind 
moved from one idea to the next. The floor was definitely sloping downward, 
which would obviously bring him below the waterline at some point; and indeed 
he had begun to sense a heavy drumming noise coming up through the deckplates, 
which might have been the pounding of mighty engines except that this ship, as 
far as he knew, wasn't going anywhere. He smelled seawater before him and saw 
dim lights shining through its surface, broken by the waves, and knew that in 
the flooded ballast tanks of this ship lay a network of underwater tunnels, and 
that in those tunnels were Drummers. For all he knew, the whole show was just a 
figment being enacted in the mind of the Drummers. Probably not the main event 
either; it was probably just an epiphenomenon of whatever deep processes the 
Drummers were running down there in their collective mind.