"Yes, indeed, sir. That's well known."
"Well, my next order is this: take a fortnight's holiday and get strong again.... Do you fish?"
"I'd like to."
"I'll put you in the way of some splendid fishing. Tarpon! After that you'll return to England with me. Sound good to you?"
"You're too generous, sir!" answered the young fellow with deep feeling.
He was Larssen's man once again.
CHAPTER XXIV
CONFESSION
Rivière was at his glass-topped, bevel-edged bench in the private biological laboratory at Wiesbaden, surrounded by his apparatus of experiment. At the moment he was looking down with one eye through the high-power immersion lens of his microscope at two tiny blobs of life in a drop of water. From day to day the salinity of the water was being slowly altered, and this was only one of thousands of experiments he had planned on the effect of changing conditions of life on the elemental organisms.
Every day he was passing in review scores of slides on which the elemental reaction to abnormal conditions was unfolding itself for his observation. Each drop of water was a world where the vital spark was struggling against the harshness of nature. Each drop of water embodied a fight of primitive protoplasm against disease. Each drop of water was contributing its tiny quota to the new book of knowledge he hoped one day to give to his fellow-men.