Wilbur had fancied that the little man had worn a brown sweater when
they first met. But now, strangely enough, he was not in the least
surprised to see it iridescent like a pigeon's breast.

"Y' ever been down that way?" inquired the little man next.

Wilbur heard the words distinctly enough, but somehow they refused to
fit into the right places in his brain. He pulled himself together,
frowning heavily.

"What--did--you--say?" he asked with great deliberation, biting off his
words. Then he noticed that he and his companion were no longer in
the barroom, but in a little room back of it. His personality divided
itself. There was one Ross Wilbur--who could not make his hands go where
he wanted them, who said one word when he thought another, and whose
legs below the knee were made of solid lead. Then there was another Ross
Wilbur--Ross Wilbur, the alert, who was perfectly clear-headed, and who
stood off to one side and watched his twin brother making a monkey of
himself, without power and without even the desire of helping him.

This latter Wilbur heard the iridescent sweater say:

"Bust me, if y' a'n't squiffy, old man. Stand by a bit an' we'll have a
ball."

"Can't have got--return--exceptionally--and the round table--pull out
hairs wi' tu clamsh'ls," gabbled Wilbur's stupefied double; and Wilbur
the alert said to himself: "You're not drunk, Ross Wilbur, that's
certain; what could they have put in your cocktail?"

The iridescent sweater stamped twice upon the floor and a trap-door fell
away beneath Wilbur's feet like the drop of a gallows. With the eyes of
his undrugged self Wilbur had a glimpse of water below. His elbow struck
the floor as he went down, and he fell feet first into a Whitehall boat.
He had time to observe two men at the oars and to look between the piles
that supported the house above him and catch a glimpse of the bay and
a glint of the Contra Costa shore. He was not in the least surprised at
what had happened, and made up his mind that it would be a good idea to
lie down in the boat and go to sleep.

Suddenly--but how long after his advent into the boat he could not
tell--his wits began to return and settle themselves, like wild birds
flocking again after a scare. Swiftly he took in the scene. The blue
waters of the bay around him, the deck of a schooner on which he stood,
the Whitehall boat alongside, and an enormous man with a face like
a setting moon wrangling with his friend in the swea