XVI. Pye 205

XVII. The Third Attack 222

XVIII. At Dead of Night 237

XIX. The Tragedy 250

XX. The Escape 267

XXI. On the Island 278

XXII. Holgate's Last Hand 295

HURRICANE ISLAND

CHAPTER I

"THE SEA QUEEN"

Pember Street, E., is never very cheerful in appearance, not even in
mid-spring, when the dingy lilacs in the forecourts of those grimy
houses bourgeon and blossom. The shrubs assimilate soon the general air
of depression common to the neighbourhood. The smoke catches and turns
them; they wilt or wither; and the bunches of flowers are sicklied over
with the smuts and blacks of the roaring chimneys. The one open space
within reach is the river, and thither I frequently repaired during the
three years I practised in the East End. At least it was something to
have that wide flood before one, the channel of great winds and the
haunt of strange craft. The tide grew turbid under the Tower Bridge and
rolled desolately about the barren wilderness of the Isle of Dogs; but
it was for all that a breach in the continuity of ugly streets and
houses, a wide road itself, on which tramped unknown and curious lives,
passing to and fro between London and foreign parts.

Unless a man be in deadly earnest or very young, I cannot conceive a
career more distressing to the imagination and crushing to the ambition
than the practice of medicine in the East End. The bulk of my cases
were club cases which enabled me to be sure of a living, and the rest
were for the most part sordid and unpleasant subjects, springing out of
the vile life of the district. Alien sailors abounded and quarrelled
fiercely. Often and often have I been awakened in the dead hours to
find drunken and foreign-speaking men at my door, with one or more
among them suffering from a dangerous knife-wound. And the point of it
that came nearly home to me was that this career would not only lead to
nothing, but was unprofitable in itself. I had taken the position in
the hope that I might make something of it, but I found that it was all
I could do to maintain my place. I made no charge for advice in my
consultations, but took a little money on the medicine which I made up.
Is any position to be conceived more degrading to a professional man?
The one bright time in my week w