Somehow or another, after this--that is, I can only time it by the
fact of my having called for a fourth or fifth glass of iced drink, or
it may have been my half-dozenth, for time does fly so,--the Captain
having, I suspect, drank the greater part of the previous one whenever
I didn't happen to be looking that way--I begin to think I must have
once more given my assent by nodding to a lot of stuff of which I
could not nave heard more than three pages, as, when I arouse myself
from my reverie, the tumbler is empty, the Captain has gone out, and
so has my cigar.

AWAY! AWAY!

"Action is the word!" said I, suddenly jumping up; and, having seized
a spade, and provided myself with a large sack, which I carried across
my shoulders, I set off for the diamond-fields. Unrecognised by a
soul, I went to work on my own account; and the brilliant things I
saw--far more brilliant than even the witticisms of WOLFFY, or the
sarcasms of ARTHUR B! Into my sack go thousands of diamonds! The sack
is full! _Aladdin_ and the Lamp not in it with me! "Hallo!" shouts
a voice, gruffly. I could see no one. "_Vox et præterea nil_," as we
used to say at Eton. Suddenly I felt myself collared. I made a gallant
attempt at resistance. A spade is a spade I know, but what is a
spade and one against twenty with pistols and daggers, headed by the
redoubtable Filliblusterer THOMAS TIDDLER himself? "Strip him!" said
T.T., shortly.

[Illustration]

Will you believe that the only way in which in this country they
arrive at implicitly believing every word you utter, is by denuding