There were two berths in the room—the upper one against the window port, which he slept in, and the lower, which contained two spread-out portmanteaus. Beneath this last were drawers in which the captain’s steward kept table linen, disused corks, the carpet which the chart-house sported in harbor, and other articles of ship’s use. Onslow had two of these drawers out on the floor, and from the recess of their site had drawn two fine green-silk-covered wires. He disentangled the coils, taking care to avoid a kink, and then unscrewed the porcelain switch which governed the room’s electric lamp. Beneath were certain pieces of metal embedded in vulcanite. Patrick Onslow gave his arms a preliminary stretch, a bare wire terminus in each hand. His fingers were trembling, as whose would not have been in the same situation? He noticed it, and commented to himself on the circumstance: “That’s excitement, I suppose—excitement pure and understandable. Not being a man of stone, I can’t help being thrilled with the majesty of the moment, the sublime vagueness of my knowledge of what will happen when a current flashes through these wires. I’m not a coward. People who write about other men’s feelings when Death is beginning to paw them on the shoulder, write mostly from the imagination; and, so far as I’ve seen, they all do it wrong. I’ve been there; I’ve felt the old man’s bony touch more than once; and so I know. A man isn’t of necessity terrified; phantoms of his past deeds do not invariably flash before him; nor does he always lose his nerve, and move like a cheap automaton. I can’t speak for others; but what I personally have felt has been a dull carelessness for what is going to happen, and a curiosity about what will come afterwards. It seems to me that a thinking man, with the ambition of a mouse, should never fear death, because once dead, he becomes wiser than all the living remnant of the human race. There are men, I know, whom physical danger turns into a helpless mass of palpitating nerves. Shelf, for instance, is one of those. By Jove!”—he smiled grimly—“by Jove! I’d give a finger to have Theodore Shelf in my shoes just now, and force him to couple these wires, and spring the mine with his own fat, white fingers. I believe—yes, I verily believe the experience would turn him honest. Ah, there goes one bell. Time’s up.” Through a lull in the wind, the tenor clang of the ship’s bell came down to him, and on its heels, more dimly, the look-out’s dissyllabic assurance in the dismal minor key that he was awake, and had nothing to report. Then Patrick Onslow made connection, and sent through the green-silk covered wires a current direct from the steamer’s dynamo; and on that moment was thrown against the iron roof of the state room as though the infernal machine had exploded beneath his very feet. * * * * *