CHAPTER XI

I LIVE AGAIN


Squire Rattray, as I say, was seated at the head of his table,
where the broken meats still lay as he and I had left them; his
fingers, I remember, were playing with a crust, and his eyes fixed
upon a distant door, as he leant back in his chair. Behind him
hovered the nigger of the Lady Jermyn, whom I had been the slower
to recognize, had not her skipper sat facing me on the squire's
right. Yes, there was Captain Harris in the flesh, eating heartily
between great gulps of wine, instead of feeding the fishes as all
the world supposed. And nearer still, nearer me than any, with his
back to my window but his chair slued round a little, so that he
also could see that door, and I his profile, sat Joaquin Santos
with his cigarette!

None spoke; all seemed waiting; and all were silent but the captain,
whose vulgar champing reached me through the crazy lattice, as I
stood spellbound and petrified without.

They say that a drowning man lives his life again before the last;
but my own fight with the sea provided me with no such moments of
vivid and rapid retrospect as those during which I stood breathless
outside the lighted windows of Kirby Hall. I landed again. I was
dogged day and night. I set it down to nerves and notoriety; but
took refuge in a private hotel. One followed me, engaged the next