be?

_PART II_

CHAPTER I

WE REACH AUSTRALIA, AND THE RESULT

The _Pescadore_, if she was slow, was certainly sure, and so the
thirty-sixth day after our departure from Port Said, as recorded in the
previous chapter, she landed us safe and sound at Williamstown, which,
as all the Australian world knows, is one of the principal railway
termini, and within an hour's journey of Melbourne. Throughout the
voyage nothing occurred worth chronicling, if I except the curious
behaviour of Lord Beckenham, who, for the first week or so, seemed sunk
in a deep lethargy, from which neither chaff nor sympathy could rouse
him. From morning till night he mooned aimlessly about the decks, had
visibly to pull himself together to answer such questions as might be
addressed to him, and never by any chance sustained a conversation
beyond a few odd sentences. To such a pitch did this depression at last
bring him that, the day after we left Aden, I felt it my duty to take
him to task and to try to bully or coax him out of it.

"Come," I said, "I want to know what's the matter with you. You've been
giving us all the miserables lately, and from the look of your face at
the present moment I'm inclined to believe it's going to continue. Out
with it! Are you homesick, or has the monotony of this voyage been too
much for you?"

He looked into my face rather anxiously, I thought, and then said: "Mr.
Hatteras, I'm afraid you'll think me an awful idiot when I _do_ tell
you, but the truth is I've got Dr. Nikola's face on my brain, and do
what I will I cannot rid myself of it. Those great, searching eyes, as
we saw them in that terrible room, have got on my nerves, and I can
think of nothing else. They haunt me night and day!"

"Oh, that's all fancy!" I cried. "Why on earth should you be frightened
of him? Nikola, in spite of his demoniacal cleverness, is only a man,
and even then you may consider that we've seen the last of him. So cheer
up, take as much exercise as you possibly can, and believe me, you'll
soon forget all about him."

But it was no use arguing with him. Nikola had had an effect upon the
youth that was little short of marvellous, and it was not until we had
well turned the Leuwin, and were safely in Australian waters, that he in
any way recovered his former spirits.

And here, lest you should give me credit for a bravery I did not
possess, I must own that I was more than a little afraid of another
meeting with