Vesper uncovered one eye, and growled, "No,—shut that door."
The steward disappeared, and did not return for some hours, while Vesper's whole sensitive system passed into a painless agony, the only movement he made being to turn himself over on his back, where he lay, apparently calm and happy, and serenely staring at the white ceiling of his dainty cell.
"Can I do anything for you, sir?" asked the steward's voice once more.
Vesper, who would not have spoken if he had been offered the Royal Edward full of gold pieces, did not even roll an eyeball at him, but kept on gravely staring upward.
"Your collar's choking you, sir," said the man, coming forward; and he deftly slipped a stud from its place and laid it on the wash-stand. "Shall I take off your boots?"
Vesper submitted to having his boots withdrawn, and his feet covered, with as much indifference as if they belonged to some other man, and continued to spend the rest of the day and the night in the same state of passivity. Towards morning he had a vague wish to know the time, but it did not occur to him, any more than it would have occurred to a stone image, to put up his hand to the watch in his breast pocket.
Daylight came, then sunlight streaming into his room, and cheery sounds of voices without, but he did not stir. Not until the thrill of contact with the land went through the steamer did he spring to his feet, like a man restored to consciousness by galvanic action. He was the first passenger to reach the wharf, and the steward, who watched him going, remarked sarcastically that he was glad to see "that 'ere dead man come to life."
Vesper was himself again when his feet touched the shore. He looked about him, saw the bright little town of Yarmouth, black rocks, a blue harbor, and a glorious sky. His contemplation of the landscape over, he reflected that he was faint from hunger. He turned his back on the steamer, where his fellow passengers had recently breakfasted at fine tables spread under a ceiling of milky white and gold, and hurried to a modest eating-house near by from which a savory smell of broiled steak and fried potatoes floated out on the morning air.
He entered it, and after a hasty wash and brush-up ate his breakfast with frantic appetite. He now felt that he had received a new lease of life, and buttoning his collar up around his neck, for the temperature was some degrees lower than that of his native city, he hurried back to the wharf, where the passengers and the customs men were quarrelling as if they had been enemies for life.
With ingratiating and politic calmness he pointed out his trunk and bicycle, assured the suspicious official that although he was an American he was honest and had nothing to sell and nothing dutiable in the former, and that he had not the slightest objection to paying the thirty per cent deposit required on the latter; then, a prey to inward laughter at the enlivening spectacle of open trunks and red faces, he proceeded to the railway station, looking about him for other signs that he was in a foreign country.