the houses were
perceptibly meaner and the streets narrower. At last I felt bound to
confess that I was out of my reckoning, and did not know where we were.

"What are we to do?" asked my lord, looking at his watch. "It's twenty
minutes to eleven, and I promised Mr. Baxter I would not be later than
the hour."

"What an idiot I was not to take that guide!"

The words were hardly out of my mouth before that personage appeared
round the corner and came towards us. I hailed his coming with too much
delight to notice the expression of malignant satisfaction on his face,
and gave him the name of the vessel we desired to find. He appeared to
understand, and the next moment we were marching off in an exactly
contrary direction.

We must have walked for at least ten minutes without speaking a word.

From one small and dirty street we turned into another and broader one.
By this time not a soul was to be seen, only a vagrant dog or two lying
asleep in the road. In this portion of the town gas lamps were at a
discount, consequently more than half the streets lay in deep shadow.
Our guide walked ahead, we followed half-a-dozen paces or so behind him.
I remember noticing a Greek cognomen upon a sign board, and recalling a
similar name in Thursday Island, when something very much resembling a
thin cord touched my nose and fell over my chin. Before I could put my
hand up to it it had begun to tighten round my throat. Just at the same
moment I heard my companion utter a sharp cry, and after that I remember
no more.

CHAPTER VIII

OUR IMPRISONMENT AND ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE

For what length of time I lay unconscious after hearing Beckenham's cry,
and feeling the cord tighten round my throat, as narrated in the
preceding chapter, I have not the remotest idea; I only know that when
my senses returned to me again I found myself in complete darkness. The
cord was gone from my neck, it is true, but something was still
encircling it in a highly unpleasant fashion. On putting my hand up to
it, to my intense astonishment, I discovered it to be a collar of iron,
padlocked at the side, and communicating with a wall at the back by
means of a stout chain fixed in a ring, which again was attached to a
swivel.

This ominous discovery set me hunting about to find out where I was, and
for a clue as to what these things might mean. That I was in a room was
evident from the fact that, by putting my hands behind me, I could touch
two walls