down there?” he asked, pointing to the floor
with fantastic precautions of voice and gesture, whose
meaning, borne upon my mind in a lurid flash, made
me very sick of my cleverness. “They are
all asleep,” I answered, watching him narrowly.
That was it. That’s what he wanted to hear;
these were the exact words that could calm him.
He drew a long breath. “Ssh! Quiet,
steady. I am an old stager out here. I know
them brutes. Bash in the head of the first that
stirs. There’s too many of them, and she
won’t swim more than ten minutes.”
He panted again. “Hurry up,” he yelled
suddenly, and went on in a steady scream: “They
are all awake—millions of them. They
are trampling on me! Wait! Oh, wait!
I’ll smash them in heaps like flies. Wait
for me! Help! H-e-elp!” An interminable
and sustained howl completed my discomfiture.
I saw in the distance the accident case raise deplorably
both his hands to his bandaged head; a dresser, aproned
to the chin showed himself in the vista of the ward,
as if seen in the small end of a telescope. I
confessed myself fairly routed, and without more ado,
stepping out through one of the long windows, escaped
into the outside gallery. The howl pursued me
like a vengeance. I turned into a deserted landing,
and suddenly all became very still and quiet around
me, and I descended the bare and shiny staircase in
a silence that enabled me to compose my distracted
thoughts. Down below I met one of the resident
surgeons who was crossing the courtyard and stopped
me. “Been to see your man, Captain?
I think we may let him go to-morrow. These fools
have no notion of taking care of themselves, though.
I say, we’ve got the chief engineer of that
pilgrim ship here. A curious case. D.T.’s
of the worst kind. He has been drinking hard
in that Greek’s or Italian’s grog-shop
for three days. What can you expect? Four
bottles of that kind of brandy a day, I am told.
Wonderful, if true. Sheeted with boiler-iron inside
I should think. The head, ah! the head, of course,
gone, but the curious part is there’s some sort
of method in his raving. I am trying to find
out. Most unusual—that thread of logic
in such a delirium. Traditionally he ought to
see snakes, but he doesn’t. Good old tradition’s
at a discount nowadays. Eh! His—er—visions
are batrachian. Ha! ha! No, seriously, I
never remember being so interested in a case of jim-jams
before. He ought to be dead, don’t you know,
after such a festive experiment. Oh! he is a
tough object. Four-and-twenty years of the tropics
too. You ought really to take a peep at him.
Noble-looking old boozer. Most extraordinary
man I ever met—medically, of course.
Won’t you?”
’I have been all along exhibiting the usual polite signs of interest, but now assuming an air of regret I murmured of want of time, and shook hands in a hurry. “I say,” he cried after me; “he can’t attend that inquiry. Is his evidence material, you think?”
‘"Not in the least,” I called back from the gateway.’