sulphur fumes bit my lungs and strangled me. By
the dim light of a sea-lantern I saw the old steward, on hands and knees,
coughing and gasping, the while he shook awake Yatsuda, the first sail-
maker. Uchino, the second sail-maker, still strangled in his sleep.

It struck me that the air might be better nearer the floor, and I proved
it when I dropped on my hands and knees. I rolled Uchino out of his
blankets with a quick jerk, wrapped the blankets about my head, face, and
mouth, arose to my feet, and dashed for'ard into the hall. After a
couple of collisions with the wood-work I again dropped to the floor and
rearranged the blankets so that, while my mouth remained covered, I could
draw or withdraw, a thickness across my eyes.

The pain of the fumes was bad enough, but the real hardship was the
dizziness I suffered. I blundered into the steward's pantry, and out of
it, missed the cross-hall, stumbled through the next starboard opening in
the long hall, and found myself bent double by violent collision with the
dining-room table.

But I had my bearings. Feeling my way around the table and bumping most
of the poisoned breath out of me against the rotund-bellied stove, I
emerged in the cross-hall and made my way to starboard. Here, at the
base of the chart-room stairway, I gained the hall that led aft. By this
time my own situation seemed so serious that, careless of any collision,
I went aft in long leaps.

Margaret's door was open. I plunged into her room. The moment I drew
the blanket-thickness from my eyes I knew blindness and a modicum of what
Bert Rhine must have suffered. Oh, the intolerable bite of the sulphur
in my lungs, nostrils, eyes, and brain! No light burned in the room. I
could only strangle and stumble for'ard to Margaret's bed, upon which I
collapsed.

She was not there. I felt about, and I felt only the warm hollow her
body had left in the under-sheet. Even in my agony and helplessness the
intimacy of that warmth her body had left was very dear to me. Between
the lack of oxygen in my lungs (due to the blankets), the pain of the
sulphur, and the mortal dizziness in my brain, I felt that I might well
cease there where the linen warmed my hand.

Perhaps I should have ceased, had I not heard a terrible coughing from
along the hall. It was new life to me. I fell from bed to floor and
managed to get upright until I gained the hall, where again I fell.
Thereafter I crawled on hands and