I explained humbly that I had been to the schoolmaster to get something to read, and produced my dingy red volumes.  At that his brow cleared.  I could see that his suspicions were set at rest.

We left Colonsay about six in the evening with the sky behind us banking for a storm, and the hills of Jura to starboard an angry purple.  Colonsay was too low an island to be any kind of breakwater against a western gale, so the weather was bad from the start.  Our course was north by east, and when we had passed the butt-end of the island we nosed about in the trough of big seas, shipping tons of water and rolling like a buffalo.  I know as much about boats as about Egyptian hieroglyphics, but even my landsman’s eyes could tell that we were in for a rough night.  I was determined not to get queasy again, but when I went below the smell of tripe and onions promised to be my undoing; so I dined off a slab of chocolate and a cabin biscuit, put on my waterproof, and resolved to stick it out on deck.

I took up position near the bows, where I was out of reach of the oily steamer smells.  It was as fresh as the top of a mountain, but mighty cold and wet, for a gusty drizzle had set in, and I got the spindrift of the big waves.  There I balanced myself, as we lurched into the twilight, hanging on with one hand to a rope which descended from the stumpy mast.  I noticed that there was only an indifferent rail between me and the edge, but that interested me and helped to keep off sickness.  I swung to the movement of the vessel, and though I was mortally cold it was rather pleasant than otherwise.  My notion was to get the nausea whipped out of me by the weather, and, when I was properly tired, to go down and turn in.

I stood there till the dark had fallen.  By that time I was an automaton, the way a man gets on sentry-go, and I could have easily hung on till morning.  My thoughts ranged about the earth, beginning with the business I had set out on, and presently—­by way of recollections of Blenkiron and Peter—­reaching the German forest where, in the Christmas of 1915, I had been nearly done in by fever and old Stumm.  I remembered the bitter cold of that wild race, and the way the snow seemed to burn like fire when I stumbled and got my face into it.  I reflected that sea-sickness was kitten’s play to a good bout of malaria.

The weather was growing worse, and I was getting more than spindrift from the seas.  I hooked my arm round the rope, for my fingers were numbing.  Then I fell to dreaming again, principally about Fosse Manor and Mary Lamington.  This so ravished me that I was as good as asleep.  I was trying to reconstruct the picture as I had last seen her at Biggleswick station . . .

A heavy body collided with me and shook my arm from the rope.  I slithered across the yard of deck, engulfed in a whirl of water.  One foot caught a stanchion of the rail, and it gave with me, so that for an instant I was more than half overboard.  But my fingers clawed wildly and caught in the links of what must have been the anchor chain.  They held, though a ton’s weight seemed to be tugging at my feet . . .  Then the old tub rolled back, the waters slipped off, and I was sprawling on a wet deck with no breath in me and a gallon of brine in my windpipe.