I knew that I had been given a fatal dose. With set teeth I stood trying to bear up against the sudden paroxysm of agony, but so excruciating was it that it proved too much. A loud cry escaped me. Writhing in the awful pains that gripped me from head to foot, I grew so weak that my legs refused to support me. Then, out of sheer exhaustion, I sank upon the floor, and the rest became blotted out in unconsciousness. CHAPTER FIVE. OUTWARD BOUND. Strange noises aroused me slowly to a sense of my helplessness. My head seemed heavy as lead, my brain incapable of receiving any impression, my throat contracted as though by a diphtheritic swelling. A low continued roaring sounded in my ears, accompanied by a curious unusual jarring. Slow to fully realise my position, it was some moments before I became convinced that the regular throbbing beneath my head was caused by machinery, and that the steady motion to and fro was the rocking of the waves. I opened my eyes and found that it was broad daylight. To the left was a round opening closed by glass--a porthole through which the summer sun was shining, its rays being shut out now and then by the bright green water that rose against it as the waves hissed past. I was on board a ship at sea. The cabin was a narrow, rather dirty place, and the mattress on which I was lying was hard, being filled with straw. It was not a passenger cabin, that was certain, for the beams across were black and dirty, and swinging on a nail were a set of unclean yellow oil-skins and a sou'-wester. So sudden and unaccountable had been my transition from the bed-chamber in that mysterious house of the Wynds', wherein my wife had been murdered, to that narrow pallet out at sea, that at first I could not believe it possible. I raised myself and looked around in wonder, half inclined to believe that the past events had been but a dream. In that instant all the curious circumstances which had followed my call to the house with the big portico came vividly before me in rapid succession, the crafty actions of the Tempter and my wife's marvellous beauty most of all. With her, I had fallen a victim to the two ingenious conspirators, her father and the Major. It had, no doubt, been intended that I should die; yet certain of the Tempter's actions seemed out of keeping with the others, thus rendering the enigma more complete. The pains in my head and the swelling in my mouth and throat were sufficient, however, to prove that the past was no chimera of the imagination. I had met with an adventure stranger, perhaps, than that experienced by any other man, for I had been both bridegroom and widower within an hour.