Lanyard replied with a sign of exorcism, releasing the rail with one hand to describe it. At the same time he shut his eyes fast and made a determined effort to shake off the bondage of this fantastic dream. But when he looked again nothing had changed, the hallucination remained as definite and bright as ever, perfect to its last least detail.
"Feel a bit shiken up, don't you, sir?" The steward moved to Lanyard's side. "I don't wonder. But if you'll just tike it easy a while, I think you'll find you aren't much 'urt."
Dumbfoundered, Lanyard wagged his head, bringing about recurrence of its splitting ache, which none the less led to the discovery that, barring a bruised shoulder and elbow, a well-battered head was all his damage. But this too he laid to delirium, as being a manifest physical inconsistency in one who had just taken part in a motor smash of the first magnitude. And wondering if exertion of will would bring this lunatic scramble of a world round to its right guise of reality, he fixed the steward with an exacting eye, the eye of a man who had made up his mind to stand for no more nonsense.
"Madame de Montalais?" he enunciated distinctly—"is she all right?"
But demonstrably this wasn't the requisite magic formula, enunciation of it failed to do away with those unbelievably factual circumstances of a summer gale at sea and set up in their stead an autumnal nocturne of moonlit hills and vales. Its only effect, indeed, was to light a flicker of real solicitude in the steward's eyes.
"Beg pardon, sir: what was that you said?"
"The lady with me—was she injured?"
"But there wasn't any lidy with you, sir—you was quite alone, arf w'y down the ladder, when the sea 'it us. I 'appened to be watchin' you, sir, though not 'andy enough to save you the fall, I'm sorry to s'y. But per'aps you feel strong enough now to let me 'elp you to your berth and fetch the doctor to give you a look over."
Lanyard in despair resigned himself: the world had gone stark staring mad and he was the maddest madman in it. Weakly he suffered the steward to take his arm in a respectful yet persuasive hold.
"Let me see, now, sir: what was the number of your stiteroom?"