e told me was intended to make me sleep. Then I
seemed to pass into a condition wherein I was the victim of a long
succession of hideous nightmares, during which I was either perpetually
battling with a thousand awful perils, or was lying helpless in the
hands of cruel and relentless savages, who were inflicting the most
dreadful torments upon me.

It was a close, muggy, and suffocatingly hot day when I at length
emerged from this condition of extreme mental and physical suffering.
My cabin port stood wide open close to my head, but not even the
faintest breath of air came through it. Presently I became aware of a
sound which I quickly identified as that of a torrential downpour of
tropical rain lashing the surface of the sea outside and the deck above.
I stirred uneasily in my bunk, wondering vaguely how long I had lain
there, and strove to rise upon my elbow, that I might look through the
port. But I might as well have striven to lift the deck over my head; I
seemed not to have an ounce of strength left in me, and I sank my head
back upon the pillow with a weary sigh. As I did so I became aware of a
slight movement beside my bunk, and, turning my eyes in that direction,
I saw Miss Anthea in the act of rising to her feet from a chair
immediately beneath the port. She had a book in her hand, which she
placed face down upon the top of the desk beside her as she rose to her
feet. Then, coming to the side of the bunk, she bent over me and gazed
into my eyes. Gradually a little smile of gratification illuminated her
somewhat pale and worn features and her eyes, which, I noticed, had a
very weary look, as though from prolonged sleeplessness.

Presently, as I smiled in answer, she spoke.

"You are feeling better, Wal--Mr Leigh?" she asked. "Do you know me?"

"Assuredly, Miss Anthea," I answered. "Why should I not know you?" I
spoke with most disconcerting difficulty; my words halted, and my lips
seemed scarcely capable of forming them.

"Oh! but that is splendid," she exclaimed, straightening her body and
clasping her hands together after the manner of a girl who hears good
news. "You are feeling better?" she persisted.

"Have I been ill, then?" I stupidly asked. Indeed my mind was at that
moment tenanted merely by a mass of most confused and incoherent
memories, of which I could make little or nothing.

"You have indeed," she replied; "dreadfully ill, raving in delirium, and
so violent that it is a miracl