“Are those bars firm and strong,” asked Leidall, “so that no one can get in?” He pointed craftily, and the doctor, caught for a second unawares, turned his head. That instant Leidall was upon him with a roar, then sank back powerless into the chair, unable to move his arms more than a few inches in any direction. Hancock stepped up quietly and made him comfortable again with cushions.
And something in Leidall’s soul turned round and looked another way. His mind became clear as daylight for a moment. The effort perhaps had caused the sudden change from darkness to great light. A memory rushed over him. “Good God!” he cried. “I am violent. I was going to do you an injury—you who are so sweet and good to me!” He trembled dreadfully, and burst into tears. “For the sake of Heaven,” he implored, looking up, ashamed and keenly penitent, “put me under restraint. Fasten my hands before I try it again.” He held both hands out willingly, beseechingly, then looked down, following the direction of the other’s kind brown eyes. His wrists, he saw, already wore steel handcuffs, and a strait waistcoat was across his chest and arms and shoulders.
THE REWARD OF ENTERPRISE
By WARD MUIR
This is how it happened [said my friend Harborough].
I’m a novelist, as you know, but if I hadn’t had to take to writing I’d have been a rolling stone by profession and by inclination. In my more philosophic moods I perceive that, really, it was sheer luck ... this occurrence about which you’ve asked me to tell you. I should never have made a success of any other trade but authorship. I’d have starved; instead I’m rather well off, as things go. But still——
You understand I was by way of being a bit venturesome, as a young man. I did a certain amount of journalism, from time to time, but my secret hopes were set on all that is implied in that specious phrase, “seeing the world.” I wanted to see the world.
Keeping this object in view I shipped on a tramp steamer, with whose captain I had struck up an acquaintanceship. Nominally I was the purser, actually I was the Captain’s guest. Cargo boats such as the S.S. Peterhof do not employ a purser.
No need to narrate the history of that voyage nor dwell upon the trivial particulars of our life on board. Suffice it to say that in mid-Atlantic our engines had a break-down. The Peterhof came to a standstill.
If it has ever happened to you during a big voyage you will know that there is something portentous about the cessation of a steamer’s machinery in mid-ocean. To be becalmed on a sailing ship may be boring: to be becalmed—if such an expression can be used—on a steamer is almost too queer to be boring. Day and night the engines have throbbed until their throbbing has penetrated into your very marrow, and when the throbbing abruptly dies you are sensible of a shock. When the Peterhof halted I ran up on deck as speedily as though we had had a collision. I saw, all round, nothing but sea, sea, sea, and it was far more amazing than if I had beheld an island or an iceberg or a raft of shipwrecked mariners, or any of the other picturesque phenomena which my fertile fancy had hastened to invent as an explanation for our stoppage.