I would have said more, but I felt that my voice was failing and I did not wish her to perceive it.

She hesitated, then impulsively turned.

"Just this: you are getting well fast, and he is getting well slowly. We have gone from the coast and the Gulf of Guinea, and are off for South America."

Then she went away and left me, and I was troubled by the sadness of her face, although she had had enough, heaven knew! to make her sad.

"So," I thought, "we have really abandoned the trade at last! And so Arnold brought down Gleazen! And what of the trader and Pedro? And what are our prospects of profit from a voyage to South America? And what of Seth Upham and—"

Then it all came back to me, a thousand memories bursting all at once upon my bewildered brain, and I lived again those days from the hour when I first saw Neil Gleazen on the porch of the inn, through the mad night when we left Topham behind us, through the terrible seasickness of my first voyage, through the sinister adventure in Havana, through all the uncanny warnings of those African witch doctors, up to the very hour when Seth Upham threw wide his arms and went, singing, down to die by the spring. I remembered our wild flight, the battle in the forest, the race down the river, the fall of the mission, and again our flight,—the girl was with us now!—the affair of the cruiser, the quarrel, the duel, and the voices that I heard as I lay on deck. Then I came to a black hiatus. Memory carried me no further and I wearily closed my eyes, having no strength to keep them open longer.

Next I knew that good Gideon North was standing over me, his hand on my pulse; there was a sharp throbbing pain in my shoulder where Gleazen's sword had struck home; I was vaguely aware that the girl was sobbing.

Now why, I thought, should anything trouble her? It was not as if she, like me, had come up against a wall that she could not pass. I seemed actually to throw myself at that black rigid barrier which cut me off from every event that followed and—my delirious metaphors were sadly mixed—left me balanced precariously on a tenuous column of memories that came to an end high up in a dark open place, like the truck of a ship in a black, stormy night.

I heard Gideon North speaking of fever and my wound; then the picture changed and the girl alone was sitting beside me. She was singing in a low voice, and the song soothed me. I did not try to follow the words; I simply let the tune lead me whither it would. Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke my memory had succeeded in passing the barrier that before had balked every effort.

Now I remembered things that had happened while I lay in my berth in my stateroom. I put together things that had happened before and after my duel. It was as if I reached out from my frail mast of memories and found accustomed ropes and knew that I could go elsewhere at will. I felt a sudden new confidence in my power to think and speak, and when the girl once more appeared, I cried out eagerly, even strongly, "Now I know what, who, and where I am."