CHAPTER VI.
I MEET DR. NIKOLA AGAIN.
It is strange with what ease, rapidity, and apparent unconsciousness the average man jumps from crisis to crisis in this strange medley he is accustomed so flippantly to call Life. It was so in my case. For two days after my return from Bournemouth I was completely immersed in the toils of Hatton Garden, had no thought above the sale of pearls and the fluctuations in the price of shell; yet, notwithstanding all this, the afternoon of the third day found me kicking my heels on the pavement of Trafalgar Square, my mind quite made up, my passage booked, and my ticket for Australia stowed away in my pocket.
The grim, stone faces of the lions above me were somehow seen obscurely, Nelson's monument was equally unregarded, for my thoughts were far away with my mind's eye, and both were completely occupied following a steamer as she threaded her tortuous way between the Heads and along the placid waters of Sydney Harbour.
So wrapped up was I in the folds of this agreeable reverie that when I felt a heavy hand upon my shoulder and heard a masculine voice say joyfully in my ear, "Dick Hatteras, or I'm a Dutchman," I started as if I had been shot.
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