When he had obtained a light by the aid of the matches which he was never without, he saw that his surmises were fully justified. Upon the floor there lay, glistening, innumerable pieces of broken glass and the half of a broken phial, while all around the débris was a small pool of liquid shining on the polished wooden floor. And from it there arose an odour so pungent and so fœtid, that he began almost at once to feel coming over him the hazy, drowsy stupefaction that he had been conscious of last night. So seizing his water-jug he unceremoniously sluiced the floor with its contents, washing away and subduing the noisome exhalation; when taking his revolver from his pocket and seeing carefully to its being charged, he dropped it into his pocket again. He took with him, too, the remnants of the broken phial.
"I shall only return here to pack my few things," he thought to himself, "but, all the same it is as well to have destroyed that stuff. Otherwise the room would have been poisoned with it."
And now--taking no light with him, for his experience of the last two hours had taught him, even had he not known it before, the way down to the garden--he descended, going out by the way that Paz had led him and so around to the lower veranda. A moment later he reached it, and mounting the steps, entered the saloon in which he expected to find Sebastian.
The man was there, he saw at once even before he stood close by the open window. He was there, sitting at the great table where the meals were partaken of; but looking dark and brooding now. Upon his face, as Julian could easily perceive, there was a scowl, and in his eyes an ominous look that might have warned a less bold man than the young sailor that he was in a dangerous mood.
"Has she been with him already," Julian wondered, "and informed him that their precious schemes are at an end, are discovered?"
"Ha!" exclaimed Sebastian, looking fixedly at him, as now Julian advanced into the room, "so you are well enough to come downstairs to-night. Yet--it is a little late. You have scarcely come to sing me those wardroom songs you spoke of, I suppose!"
"No," Julian said, "it is not to sing songs that I am here. But to talk about serious matters. Sebastian Ritherdon--if you are Sebastian Ritherdon, which I think doubtful--you have got to give me an explanation to-night, not only of who you really are, but also of the reason why, during the time I have been in this locality, you have four times attempted my life, or caused it to be attempted."
"Are you mad?" the other exclaimed, staring at him with still that ominous look upon his face. "You must be to talk to me like this."
"No," Julian replied. "Instead, perfectly sane. I was, perhaps, more or less demented last night when under the influence of the fumes of the Amancay plant which had been sprinkled on my pillow, as well as on my jacket and waistcoat; and you also were more or less demented to-night when you had by an accident taken some of the poison into your system, owing to you making a meal of the doctored mountain mullet you had prepared for me--your guest. But--now--we are both recovered and--an explanation is needed."
"My God!" exclaimed Sebastian, "you must be mad!"