* * * *

As I retired to my nook and lay down, I reflected that what the big
peasant had said was apposite enough-that the young fellow's face did
in very truth resemble an old and shabby woollen mitten.

Presently I dreamt that I was painting a belfry, and that, as I did so,
huge, goggle-eyed jackdaws kept flying around the belfry's gables, and
flapping at me with their wings and hindering my work: until, as I
sought to beat them off, I missed my footing, fell to earth, and awoke
to find my breath choking amid a dull, sick, painful feeling of
lassitude and weakness, and a kaleidoscopic mist quavering before my
eyes till it rendered me dizzy. From my head, behind the car, a thin
stream of blood was trickling.

Rising with some difficulty to my feet, I stepped aft to a pump, washed
my head under a jet of cold water, bound it with my handkerchief, and,
returning, inspected my resting-place in a state of bewilderment as to
what could have caused the accident to happen.

On the deck near the spot where I had been asleep, there was standing
stacked a pile of small logs prepared for the cook's galley; while, in
the precise spot where my head had rested there was reposing a birch
faggot of which the withy-tie had come unfastened. As I raised the
fallen faggot I perceived it to be clean and composed of silky loppings
of birch-bark which rustled as I fingered them; and, consequently, I
reflected that the ceaseless vibration of the steamer must have caused
the faggot to become jerked on to my head.

Reassured by this plausible explanation of the unfortunate, but absurd,
occurrence of which I have spoken, I next returned to the stern, where
there were no oppressive odours to be encountered, and whence a good
view was obtainable.

The hour was the turn of the night, the hour of maximum tension before
dawn, the hour when all the world seems plunged in a profundity of
slumber whence there can be no awakening, and when the completeness of
the silence attunes the soul to special sensibility, and when the stars
seem to be hanging strangely close to earth, and the morning star, in
particular, to be shining as brightly as a miniature sun. Yet already
had the heavens begun to grow coldly grey, to lose their nocturnal
softness and warmth, while the rays of the stars were drooping like
petals, and the moon, hitherto golden, had turned pale and become
dusted over with silver, and moved further from the earth as intang