all sorts of wild things going
through my head to-night . . . waves pounding, pounding, pounding. It
never stops, Selwyn. . . . And I seem to hear shouts a long way
off--like smugglers landing their stuff in the dark. I'm an awful
idiot to talk like this, old boy, but I've lost my courage a bit.'

And so for nearly half-an-hour the American remained watching by the
lad as sleep hovered about and gradually settled on him.

As Selwyn quietly stole from the room the City's clocks were striking
three.

II.

It was after nine o'clock when Selwyn woke from a deep, refreshing
sleep. Hurrying into the other room, he found no sign of his guests.

'When did these gentlemen leave?' he asked of his servant, who had
answered his ring.

'It must have been about six o'clock, sir. I heard the door open and
shut then.'

'Why didn't you call me?'

'I wasn't wanting to disturb you, sir. It's the first good sleep
you've had for a long time.'

It was true. The sinking of himself into the personality of another
man had released the fetters of his intensive egotism. For a whole
night he had forgotten, or at least neglected, his world-mission in
simple solicitude for one who had fallen by the wayside.

After the stimulus of a cold shower and a hearty breakfast, he resumed
his crusade against the entrenched forces of Ignorance, but in spite of
the utmost effort in concentration, the memory of the lonely figure by
the Thames intruded constantly on his mind. It was not only that Dick
was the brother of Elise--although Selwyn's longing for her had become
a dull pain that was never completely buried beneath his thoughts; nor
was it merely the unconscious charm possessed by the boy, a charm that
seized on the very heart-strings. To the American the real cruelty of
the thing lay in the existence of a Society that could first debase so
fine a creature, and then make no effort to retrieve or to atone for
its crime.

Putting aside the day's work he had planned, he flung his mind into the
arena of England's social conditions. Exerting to the full his gift of
mental discipline, he rejected the promptings of prejudice and of
sentiment, and brought his sense of analysis to bear on his subject
with the cold, callous detachment of a scientist studying some cosmic
phenomenon.

For more than an hour his brain skirmished for an opening, until,
spreading the blank sheets of paper before him, he wrote: 'THE ISLAND
OF DARKNESS.' Tilt