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