ten minutes'—purchase. It was as if I had been taken clean out of the world with no man to extend me a helping hand. Roderick, truly, would move heaven and earth to reach me, but what could he hope for against such a crew; or how should I expect to be alive when he brought his attempts to a head? And I thought of him with deep feelings of friendship at that moment, and wondered what Mary would say. She will be serious, I argued, for the first time in her life, and they will know much anxiety. Yet that must be—in the floating tomb where I lay I could hope to send no word to the living world which I had left.
I had smoked one cigar in the cabin, listening to the tremendous throb of the ship's screws, and the swish of the sea as we cleaved it, when the electric light went out, and I was left in darkness. The sudden change gave me some alarm, and I cocked my revolver, being resolute to account for one man at least, if any attempt were made upon me; but when I had sat quite still for some half-an-hour there was no noise of movement save on the deck above, and my own cabin remained as still as the grave. It appeared that I was to be left unmolested for that night at any rate; and, being something of a philosopher, I waited for another hour or so, and finding that no one came near me, I undressed and lay down in one of the most seductive beds
