I hauled him over, a bit at a time, until at last I was able to lower him gently to the ground. Then I dragged him--through the water I am sorry to say--to the boat, and with no small difficulty contrived to tumble him in. This was the most troublesome part of the business, for the boat behaved as coyly as a girl when a sweetheart tries to snatch a first kiss--dodging this way and that, ducking and dipping, till the pair of us were like to be thrown headlong into the water. But I achieved my purpose at last, and having lashed my captive's ankles together with the rope--the "painter" yachtsmen call it, do they not?--by which the boat had been fastened, I took up the oars and rowed out into mid-river. By this time my captive was beginning to show signs of returning consciousness, his revival being accelerated, no doubt, by the wetting he had received in being dragged into the boat. Apparently he was still in pain from my kick, for he groaned feebly once or twice, and then moaned: "I feel sick." "Yes," I said, "and you'll feel sicker before I've done with you." It was brutal to speak thus to a man defenceless, and in pain; but I had been under a terrible strain that evening, and now that the danger was passed, the inevitable reaction had come, and none could have been more surprised than I was to find the reaction take the form of something like savagery. By nature I am by no means vindictive; but, remembering that this very man had gone round to the back of the opium den with the deliberate intention of murdering me, I took, I am ashamed to say, a cruel and catlike pleasure in having him thus at my mercy, and in seeing him a prey to the same terrors which I had been compelled to endure. Police magistrates and His Majesty's judges may to-day replace the rude justice of the primæval forest; but in spite of the humanising and refining influence of civilisation, the beast in us dies hard. "Where am I?" he inquired, trying to raise his head. "You're clearly a man of very little originality," I said, still exulting savagely in having him at my mercy, instead of being--as earlier in the evening I was like to be--at his. "'Where am I?' is what they all say--whether on the stage, or in a novel, or in real life--on recovering from a faint. But, if you particularly wish to know where you are, I don't mind telling you. You are in a boat on the river Thames, somewhere off Limehouse; but you'll be in even less comfortable quarters before long, if I'm not much mistaken." "Who are you?" he asked. "Well," I said, "anyone listening to our conversation might think that I was 'A' and you were 'Q' in Mangnall's book of Questions and Answers. I should think you'd know who I was without having to make so many inquiries, Mr. Parker. I'm the man you and your friend Smudgy were told off to murder not so very many minutes ago. Now you are my prisoner, and with your very kind permission, or without it, I'm going to hand you over to the police."