‘I was mad when I did that deed,’ thought Lucius; ‘mad as in the time that followed when I lay raging in a brain fever; yet, Heaven knows, I believed it was but stern justice. There was no tribunal yonder. We were alone in the wilderness with God, and I deemed I did but right when I made myself the instrument of His wrath. All that followed that awful moment is darkness. Schanck never spoke of that villain’s fate, nor did I. We instinctively avoided the hideous subject, and conspired to hide the secret from Geoffrey. Poor, good-natured old Schanck! I wonder whether he has found his way back from the Californian gold-fields. If I had leisure for such a pilgrimage, I’d go down to Battersea and inquire. I doubt if a rough life among gold-diggers would suit him long.’ Book the Second. CHAPTER I. GEOFFREY BEGINS A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY. Not very far did Geoffrey Hossack proceed upon his Norwegian voyage. At Hull he discovered that—perusing his Bradshaw with a too rapid eye, and a somewhat disordered mind—he had mistaken the date of the steamer’s departure, and must waste two entire days in that prosperous port, waiting for the setting forth of that vessel. Even one day in that thriving commercial town seemed to him intolerably long. He perambulated King William-street and the market-place, Silver-street, Myton-gate, Low-gate, and all the gates; stared at the shipping; lost his way amidst a tangle of quays and dry docks and wet docks and store-houses and moving bridges, which were for ever barring his way; and exhausted the resources of Kingston-upon-Hull in the space of two hours. Then, in very despair, he took rail to Withernsea, and dined at a gigantic hotel, where he was ministered to by a London waiter, who provided him with the regulation fried sole and cutlet. Having washed down these too familiar viands with two or three glasses of Manzanilla, he set forth in quest of a solitude where to smoke his cigar in communion with that vast waste of waters—the German Ocean—and his own melancholy thoughts.