You may conceive with what anger, and with what fierce resentment, I watched this man and his yacht going fast away from me—­and with what despair too.  But even in that moment I was conscious of two facts—­I now knew that yonder was the probable murderer of both Phillips and Crone, and that he was leaving me to die because I was the one person living who could throw some light on those matters, and, though I had kept silence up to then, might be tempted, or induced, or obliged to do so—­he would silence me while he had so good a chance.  And the other was, that although there seemed about as much likelihood of my ever seeing Berwick again as of being made King of England, I must do my utmost to save my strength and my life.  I had a wealth of incentives—­Maisie, my mother, Mr. Lindsey, youth, the desire to live; and now there was another added to them—­the desire to circumvent that cold-hearted, cruel devil, who, I was now sure, had all along been up to some desperate game, and to have my revenge and see justice done on him.  I was not going to give in without making a fight for it.

But it was a poor chance that I had—­and I was well aware of it.  There was small prospect of fishing boats or the like coming out that evening; small likelihood of any coasting steamer sighting a bit of a speck like me.  All the same, I was going to keep my chin up as long as possible, and the first thing to do was to take care of my strength.  I made shift to divest myself of a heavy pea-jacket that I was wearing and of the unnecessary clothing beneath it; I got rid, too, of my boots.  And after resting a bit on my back and considering matters, I decided to make a try for land—­I might perhaps meet some boat coming out.  I lifted my head well up and took a glance at what I could see—­and my heart sank at what I did see!  The yacht was a speck in the distance by that time, and far beyond it the Cheviots and the Lammermoors were mere bits of grey outline against the gold and crimson of the sky.  One thought instantly filled and depressed me—­I was further from land than I had believed.

At this distance from it I have but confused and vague recollections of that night.  Sometimes I dream of it—­even now—­and wake sweating with fear.  In those dreams I am toiling and toiling through a smooth sea—­it is always a smooth, oily, slippery sea—­towards something to which I make no great headway.  Sometimes I give up toiling through sheer and desperate aching of body and limbs, and let myself lie drifting into helplessness and a growing sleep.  And then—­in my dream—­I start to find myself going down into strange cavernous depths of shining green, and I wake—­in my dream—­to begin fighting and toiling again against my compelling desire to give up.