ntic haste he
scrambled up the poop-ladder and rushed aft.

_The boats were gone_!

"Then it was an absolute fact that he was left there alone and
powerless, doomed to watch with a horrible fascination the steady
relentless approach of the Grim Enemy in his most terrible form, and to
suffer the while in imaginative anticipation all the agonies of a
thousand fiery deaths. Oh, God! it was too much. Mercy! mercy!" And
with a demoniac yell he stood clutching and tugging at his hair with
both hands, his teeth clenched, his eyes fixed and almost bursting from
their sockets, foam bubbling from his lips--_a raving madman_!

This terrible state of distraction endured for nearly an hour, and then
a species of numbness seized upon his faculties, his anxiety vanished,
and he found his thoughts straying away and fixing themselves upon the
veriest trivialities, conjuring up again before his mental vision acts
and words which had never recurred to him since the day on which they
had been done or said, mischievous practical jokes played off upon some
unlucky school-fellow, mess-room jests and tattle, and a thousand other
absurdities, at which he laughed aloud. Then disconnected words and
phrases rushed helter-skelter through his seething brain, having no
meaning, yet causing him the keenest annoyance, because he believed he
had heard them before, and was anxious to connect them with the
circumstances of their utterance. There was one in particular which
especially tormented him. "Go for a cruise on your own account; go for
a cruise on your own account," his brain reiterated with merciless
pertinacity. What did it mean? Where had he heard those words before,
and who had uttered them? He felt absolutely certain that at some time
or other he had heard that phrase spoken, and that it had some intimate
connection with himself, that it somehow concerned him vitally. "There
was something else, too, said at the same time--something about--about--
what was it? Something about--ah! yes--spars and a raft--`spars--raft--
go for a cruise on your own account.' What could it mean?" Finally a
gleam of reason returned to his clouded mind, and he realised dimly that
it was of the utmost importance that he should construct a raft and "go
for a cruise on his own account."

Having at last grasped this idea, he rose from the seat upon which he
had flung himself, and upon which he seemed to himself to have been
sitting as long as ever he cou