undertakers were already roughing out his nephew's coffin. John Hay was
generally alone in the house, and even when he had company, his friends
could not hear the clamorous uncle. The shadow inside his brain grew
larger and blacker. His fear of death was driving John Hay mad.

Then, from the deeps of his mind, where he had stowed away all his
discarded information, rose to light the scientific fact of the Easterly
journey. On the next occasion that his uncle shouted up the stairway
urging him to make haste and live, a shriller voice cried, 'Who goes
round the world once easterly, gains one day.'

His growing diffidence and distrust of mankind made John Hay unwilling
to give this precious message of hope to his friends. They might take it
up and analyse it. He was sure it was true, but it would pain him
acutely were rough hands to examine it too closely. To him alone of all
the toiling generations of mankind had the secret of immortality been
vouchsafed. It would be impious--against all the designs of the Creator--
to set mankind hurrying eastward. Besides, this would crowd the
steamers inconveniently, and John Hay wished of all things to be alone.
If he could get round the world in two months--some one of whom he had
read, he could not remember the name, had covered the passage in eighty
days--he would gain a clear day; and by steadily continuing to do it for
thirty years, would gain one hundred and eighty days, or nearly the half
of a year. It would not be much, but in course of time, as civilisation
advanced, and the Euphrates Valley Railway was opened, he could improve
the pace.

Armed with many sovereigns, John Hay, in the thirty-fifth year of his
age, set forth on his travels, two voices bearing him company from Dover
as he sailed to Calais. Fortune favoured him. The Euphrates Valley