p, however, directly, with the recklessness of despair; every
separate stair creaking and cracking under him, as if a young elephant
had been retiring to bed instead of a young man. He blew out his light,
tore off his clothes, and, slipping between the sheets, began to breathe
elaborately, as if he was fast asleep--in the desperate hope of being
still able to deceive his father, if Mr. Thorpe came up stairs to look
after him.

No sooner had he assumed a recumbent position than a lusty and ceaseless
singing began in his ears, which bewildered and half deafened him. His
bed, the room, the house, the whole world tore round and round, and
heaved up and down frantically with him. He ceased to be a human being:
he became a giddy atom, spinning drunkenly in illimitable space. He
started up in bed, and was recalled to a sense of his humanity by a cold
perspiration and a deathly qualm. Hiccups burst from him no longer;
but they were succeeded by another and a louder series of sound--sounds
familiar to everybody who has ever been at sea--sounds nautically and
lamentably associated with white basins, whirling waves, and misery of
mortal stomachs wailing in emetic despair.

In the momentary pauses between the rapidly successive attacks of the
malady which now overwhelmed him, and which he attributed in after-life
entirely to the dyspeptic influences of toasted cheese, Zack was faintly
conscious of the sound of slippered feet ascending the stairs. His back
was to the door. He had no strength to move, no courage to look
round, no voice to raise in supplication. He knew that his door was
opened--that a light came into the room--that a voice cried "Degraded
beast!"--that the door was suddenly shut again with a bang--and that he
was left once more in total darkness. He did not care for the light,
or the voice, or the banging of the door: he did not think of them
afterwards; he did not mourn over the past, or speculate on the future.
He just sank back on his pillow with a gasp, drew the clothes over him
with a groan, and fell asleep, blissfully reckless of the retribution
that was to come with the coming daylight.

When he woke, late the next morning, conscious of nothing, at first,
except that it was thawing fast out of doors, and that he had a violent
headache, but gradually recalled to a remembrance of the memorable
fight in the Snuggery by a sense of soreness in his ribs, and a growing
conviction that his nose had become too large