've been mixing your
drinks."

"Drinks!" He stared at me stupidly.

"You used to carry your liquor better than this."

"I give you my word, Atkinson, that I have not had a drain for two days.
It's not drink. I don't know what it is. I suppose you think this is
drink." He took up my hand in his burning grasp, and passed it over his
own forehead.

"Great Lord!" said I.

His skin felt like a thin sheet of velvet beneath which lies a
close-packed layer of small shot. It was smooth to the touch at any one
place, but to a finger passed along it, rough as a nutmeg grater.

"It's all right," said he, smiling at my startled face. "I've had the
prickly heat nearly as bad."

"But this is never prickly heat."

"No, it's London. It's breathing bad air. But tomorrow it'll be all
right. There's a surgeon aboard, so I shall be in safe hands. I must be
off now."

"Not you," said I, pushing him back into a chair. "This is past a joke.
You don't move from here until a doctor sees you. Just stay where you
are."

I caught up my hat, and rushing round to the house of a neighbouring
physician, I brought him back with me. The room was empty and Vansittart
gone. I rang the bell. The servant said that the gentleman had ordered a
cab the instant that I had left, and had gone off in it. He had told the
cabman to drive to the docks.

"Did the gentleman seem ill?" I asked.

"Ill!" The man smiled. "No, sir, he was singin' his 'ardest all the
time."

The information was not as reassuring as my servant seemed to think, but
I reflected that he was going straight back to the _Eastern Star_, and
that there was a doctor aboard of her, so that there was nothing which I
could do in the matter. None the less, when I thought of his thirst, his
burning hands, his heavy eye, his tripping speech, and lastly, of that
leprous forehead, I carried with me to bed an unpleasant memory of my
visitor and his visit.

At eleven o'clock next day I was at the docks, but the _Eastern Star_
had already moved down the river, and was nearly at Gravesend. To
Gravesend I went by train, but only to see her topmasts far off, with
a plume of smoke from a tug in front of her. I would hear no more of my
friend until I rejoined him at Falmouth. When I got back to my offices,
a telegram was awaiting me from Mrs. Vansittart, asking me to meet her;
and next evening found us both at the Royal Hotel, Falmouth, where we
were to wait for the _Eastern Star_. Ten days passed,