thrown off immersing himself
bodily under the bedstead, like a chimley-sweep before the application of
machinery.

The next day--I forbear the horrors of that night--was a very foggy day
in our part of London, insomuch that it was necessary to light the Coffee-
room gas. We was still alone, and no feverish words of mine can do
justice to the fitfulness of his appearance as he sat at No. 4 table,
increased by there being something wrong with the meter.

Having again ordered his dinner, he went out, and was out for the best
part of two hours. Inquiring on his return whether any of the answers
had arrived, and receiving an unqualified negative, his instant call was
for mulligatawny, the cayenne pepper, and orange brandy.

Feeling that the mortal struggle was now at hand, I also felt that I must
be equal to him, and with that view resolved that whatever he took I
would take. Behind my partition, but keeping my eye on him over the
curtain, I therefore operated on Mulligatawny, Cayenne Pepper, and Orange
Brandy. And at a later period of the day, when he again said, "Orange
Brandy," I said so too, in a lower tone, to George, my Second Lieutenant
(my First was absent on leave), who acts between me and the bar.

Throughout that awful day he walked about the Coffee-room continually.
Often he came close up to my partition, and then his eye rolled within,
too evidently in search of any signs of his Luggage. Half-past six came,
and I laid his cloth. He ordered a bottle of old Brown. I likewise
ordered a bottle of old Brown. He drank his. I drank mine (as nearly as
my duties would permit) glass for glass against his. He topped with
coffee and a small glass. I topped with coffee and a small glass. He
dozed. I dozed. At last, "Waiter!"--and he ordered his bill. The
moment was now at hand when we two must be locked in the deadly grapple.

Swift as the arrow from the bow, I had formed my resolution; in other
words, I had hammered it out between nine and nine. It was, that I would
be the first to open up the subject with a full acknowledgment, and would
offer any gradual settlement within my power. He paid his bill (doing
what was right by attendance) with his eye rolling about him to the last
for any tokens of his Luggage. One only time our gaze then met, with the
lustrous fixedness (I believe I am correct in imputing that character to
it?) of the well-known Basilisk. The decisive moment had arrived.

With a toler