"The stranger dies first," he said, and pointed the rod at me. Dream clung to me. I felt a sensation as of fire in my throat.
And now comes what seems to me—though it may not so seem to others—the strangest part of my story. Passing through a kind of swoon, I found myself gently rocked as on board a ship. Opening my eyes I saw two men bending over me. One of them held a glass containing brandy to my lips.
"You see?" said a voice triumphantly. "The beggar's alive and I win my bet."
I found afterwards that I was on board the steamship Hermione bound from Alexandria to Cardiff with a cargo of cotton seed. I had been found senseless at the bottom of an open boat. I was treated with plenty of rough kindness and brought back to my own country; but over the story which I told them the crew shook their heads gravely.
Since then nothing of import happened to me until I was brought to this great barrack-like place where I now live in fair comfort. There are many doctors here and many guests. Some of the guests, I fear, have an aberration of the intellect, for they say strange things. I am well contented. I have lived my life. But since no one will listen to my marvellous experiences in the island of Thule—or if they listen at all make a jest of them—I have written them down here for the service of another and a wiser generation.
IN A LONDON GARDEN
CHAPTER I
THE RECLAMATION OF THE CAT-WALK: AND THE STORY OF "THE POOL IN THE DESERT"
My London garden is not really mine. I have it for a period of years on conditions arranged between two legal gentlemen, the tenant paying the landlord's cost. Obviously the person who owns the property can better afford to pay those costs than the man who has to hire it. And similarly the man who is lending money on a mortgage can better afford to pay costs than the man who has to borrow it. But the tenant pays, and the borrower pays. It is a principle of the law that the poor man pays. But this reflection, into which bitterness of spirit has led me, has nothing whatever to do with my garden.