During the progress of the meal the Countess chatted with me as pleasantly as if we were sitting in her dining-room at Wiltshire House. It was significant, however, that Rotherhithe's name was never once mentioned. When the meal was at an end she gave us permission to smoke, and accordingly, after our coffee had been handed to us, Conrad proffered me his cigarette case. How was I to know that the coffee had been drugged, and that within a quarter of an hour of my drinking it, I should be lying fast asleep in my chair, beyond all knowledge of my surroundings. The Countess had scored another trick. CHAPTER IX Of all that occurred after I became unconscious I am quite ignorant. From the moment of my closing my eyes until six o'clock next morning my mind is a perfect blank. All I remember is, that little by little I became aware of a strange oscillation. It was as if my bed were being tossed violently about, to the accompaniment of a noise like the groaning of a thousand tormented souls. "It will go off if I lie still," I said to myself. But instead, every moment, it grew worse. At last, when I could bear it no longer, I opened my eyes and looked about me. What I saw was calculated to afford me considerable astonishment. I had imagined myself to be lying in the room whence I had escaped, what I supposed to be a few hours before. I was not there, however. The place in which I was lying was the cabin of a ship, and was some nine feet long by six in width. Opposite the bunk in which I lay, was the customary brass-bound port-hole, with a cushioned settee, or locker, below it. The door was at the foot of the bed; a wash-hand stand with a mirror above it stood against the bulkhead, there was a narrow strip of faded carpet upon the floor, and when I have noted these things I have furnished you with a detailed description of the cabin. What the name of the vessel was and how I had got there were questions I could not answer. One thing, however, was quite certain; whatever else she might be, the ship was not a good sea boat. She rolled abominably, and from the pounding noise on deck I gathered that she was taking aboard more seas than was altogether comfortable. With my head clanging like a ship's bell, I managed to scramble out of my bunk and approach the port-hole. Constantly blurred though the glass was by the waves that dashed against it, I was able to convince myself that there was no land in sight. All I had before me was a confused, tumbling mass of water, an expanse of cloud-covered sky, and once, when we rose upon a particularly heavy sea, the fleeting picture of a barque making extremely bad weather of it, three miles or so distant.