Glyddyr gave the orders to unmoor and make sail, after a great deal of hesitation, and then countermanded those orders, and went down into his cabin.  There he made the man who acted as steward and valet open for him a pint of champagne, which he tossed off as if suffering from a burning thirst.

That seemed to do him good.  His hand ceased to shake, and the peculiar sensation of sinking passed off for the time as he sat by the cabin window, lit a cigar, and let it out again while he watched the Fort, with its drawn-down blinds, and thought over the last night’s proceedings.

“It was an accident,” he said to himself, “a terrible mistake, and all in vain.  Good heavens! who could have thought that a little drop of clear white-looking stuff could have done that; and him so used to taking it.”

He shrank away from the window, dashed away his cigar and sat down there in the cabin, with his face buried in his hands.

“I ought to have summoned help when I saw how strange and cold he turned.  It would have saved him, poor old fellow!  I wouldn’t for all the world that it should have happened, it seems impossible, and I can’t even believe it yet.”

With a start of childish disbelief, he straightened himself and looked out of the cabin window, as if he had half-expected to see the blinds drawn up, and the Fort looking as usual.

But there was no change, and, with a groan of agony, he turned away and stamped his foot with impatient rage.

“Just like my cursed luck,” he cried.  “Any one but me would have made a pot of money over Simoom.  I could have made enough to free me from this wretched bondage, but now it’s just as if something always stood between me and success, and baulked all my plans.”

He let his head sink upon his hands, and sat thinking again, but only to raise himself in an angry fashion and ring the bell.

“You ring, sir?” said the steward at the end of a minute.

“Of course, I rang,” said Glyddyr with petulant rage.  “You heard me ring, and knew I rang, or you wouldn’t have come.  Well, where is it?”

“I beg pardon, sir?”

“I say, where is it?”

“Where is what, sir?”

“The pint of champagne I told you to bring.”

“Beg pardon, sir, I did bring it and you drank it.”

“What?” roared Glyddyr.  “Yes, of course, so I did.  I had forgotten.  Bring me another.”

“Guv’nor on the house?” said one of the sailors.

“Hold your row.  Upset over that affair up at the toyshop,” said the steward in a whisper, and he took in the fresh pint of wine.

“Set it down.”

“Yes, sir.”

The steward beat a retreat, and Glyddyr tossed off another glass, poured out the remainder, and sat gazing at it vacantly for a few minutes before taking it up, his hand once more trembling violently.

“If I weren’t such a cursed coward,” he said, “I could get on.  He must have had a lot before, and that’s what did it.  By George, it gives me the horrors!”

He tossed off the wine.

“No,” he muttered as he set down the glass; “it wasn’t what I gave him.  It wasn’t enough, and to think now that there was all that lying ready to my hand, without my having the pluck to take what I wanted.  I must have been a fool.  I must have been mad.”

“Curse these bottles!” he cried, after a pause.  “Pint?  They don’t hold half ­a wretched swindle.  I believe there are thousands lying there; and I might have borrowed what I wanted, and all would have been well; but I was such a fool.”

“No, I wasn’t,” he cried, as if apostrophising someone.  “How could I get it with that woman coming in and out, and the feeling on me that one of the girls might open the door at any moment.  They’d have thought I meant to steal the cursed stuff.  Then, too, it seemed as if he might wake up at any moment.  Bah!  How upset I do feel.  That stuff’s no better than water.”

He rose angrily, and opened a locker, from which he took out a brandy decanter, and placed it on the table.  “Let’s have a nip of you.  I seem to want something to steady my nerves.”

He poured out a goodly dram and tossed it off.

“Ah, that’s better!  One can taste you.  Seems to take off this horrible feeling of sinking. ­Poor old fellow!  Seemed as if he would wake up.  Never wake up again.”

He started up and looked sharply round, trembling violently; and then wiped his forehead with his hand.

“This will not do!” he muttered.  “I mustn’t show the white feather.  I’ve got nothing to fear.  Nothing at all.  Why should I have?  It was an accident; I didn’t mean it.  No:  wouldn’t hurt a hair of the old man’s head ­no, not a hair.  Yes:  it was an accident.”

He drew up his head and picked up the cigar he had thrown down, re-lit it, and after a puff or two, threw it down once more.

“Wretched trash!” he muttered, taking out his case and fiercely biting the end off another.  One of Gellow’s best.  “Ah,” he cried, as he brought down his fist upon the table heavily.  “Only let me once get clear of that man!  And I might have done it so easily,” he continued, as he lit the cigar, “so very easily, and been free of that cursed incubus for a time.”

He let his cigar go out again, and his head sank upon his hands as he stared in a maundering way at the cabin door.

“But it’s always my luck ­always my luck; and I’m the most miserable wretch that ever crawled.”

There was no one present to endorse his words, as the maudlin tears rose to his eyes and dripped slowly down between his feet, nature seeming to distil the wine and spirits he had been imbibing all the morning ever since he had left the cot in which he had lain tossing in a fever of fear all through the night.

But after a time champagne and brandy had their effect, and the abject shivering man of half-an-hour before seemed to have grown defiant as to the future.

He was in the act of snapping his fingers with a half-tipsy laugh, when a boat bumped up against the side, and he heard a trampling on the deck, and the buzz of voices.

“What’s that?” he panted, completely sobered now, and trembling violently, as he suddenly turned to one of the most abject-looking and white-faced creatures it is possible to imagine.  “What’s that?” he panted, with his voice trembling; and he took up the brandy to help himself again.  “Bah! some boat has struck us.  That’s all.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said a voice; and the steward stood in the doorway.

“Yes; what is it?”

“Boat from the shore, sir, with a policeman in the stern and another man.”

“Policeman?  Other man?” faltered Glyddyr in a low, faint voice; “what do they want?”

“You, sir,” said the man; and then, “Oh, here they are.”

Glyddyr sat back, staring at the men wildly.

“Well,” said the steward to himself; “I have seen the guv’nor a bit on, but this beats all.  I say, you might have waited till you were asked to come down.”

This to a policeman who was stooping down to enter the cabin, while Glyddyr clutched the table, and held on, for the sickening sensation in his head threatened a complete collapse.