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When I came on deck next morning the coast of Arabia was rising, a thin thread of hazy blue between the leaden grey of the sea and the soft grey of the sky. The morning was cloudy, and the blazing sunlight was veiled in atmospheric gauze. I had hardly put my foot on deck when Natalie Brande ran to meet me. I hung back guiltily. "I thought you would never come. There is dreadful news!" she cried.
Brande received me with the easy affability of a man to whom good breeding had ceased to be a habit, and had become an instinct. Only once did anything pass between us bearing on the extraordinary relationship which he had established with me the relation of victor and victim, I considered it.
"Why so?" he asked coldly. "Because it is absurd; and because it isn't decent." "My dear Abraham," Brande said quietly, "or is your period so recent as that of Isaac or Jacob? My sister pleases herself in these matters, and has every right to do so." "She has not. You are her brother." "Very well, I am her brother. She has no right to think for herself; no right to live save by my permission.
I murmured some words about the eloquence of the lecture, but interrupted myself when I observed his complete indifference to my remarks, and said, "Neither praise nor blame seems to affect you, Brande." "Certainly not," he answered calmly. "You forget that there is nothing deserving of either praise or blame." I knew I could not argue with him, so we passed on.
When I reached my room that night I found a note from Brande. To receive a letter from a man in whose house I was a guest did not surprise me. I was past that stage. There was nothing mysterious in the letter, save its conclusion.
"Give us another day only another day!" But Brande made answer: "It is now too late." "Too late!" the people wailed. "Yes, too late. I warned you long ago. Are you not yet ready? In two hours the disintegrating agent will enter on its work. No human power could stop it now. Not if every particle of the material I have compounded were separated and scattered to the winds.
To the former class belonged Charles Seager, and John Brande Morris, of Exeter College, both learned Orientalists, steeped in recondite knowledge of all kinds; men who had worked their way to knowledge through hardship and grinding labour, and not to be outdone in Germany itself for devouring love of learning and a scholar's plainness of life.
Her brain was not, therefore, under normal control. I determined instantly to tell him on the first opportunity that if he did not wish to see the girl permanently injured, he would have to curtail his hypnotic influence. "It is rather a stirring sight," I said so sharply to Miss Brande that she started. I meant to startle her, but did not succeed as far as I wished.
"These people do not really know you, with all their telepathic power. You are not not " "Not as great a fool as they think. Thank you. I mean to prove that to them some day." With that I turned away from him, although I felt that he would have gladly stayed longer with me. While the Esmeralda was sweeping over the long swells of the Mediterranean, I heard Brande lecture for the second time.
The water from the discharge-pipe poured down in a cascade, that shone like silver. Every turn of the screw dashed a thousand flashes on either side, and the heaving of the lead was like the flight of a meteor, as it plunged with a luminous trail far down into the dark unfathomable depths below. My name was spoken softly. Natalie Brande stood beside me. The spell was complete.
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