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But still he knew that this was no more than a madman's idea; that it would ill become him so to act. He had duties to perform, and he must perform them, let them be ever so distasteful. It was only an idea, made to be rejected; but, nevertheless, he thought of it. To do something, however, was incumbent on him.
He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately ascended the staircase, but, on the first landing place, was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman's impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his opponent, he found himself powerless beneath a calm, stern eye, which possessed the mysterious property of quelling frenzy at its height.
His sister's last words rang unceasingly in his ears, like the words of an oracle, fatal, inevitable, calling out to him for blood, and for innocent blood! I shall not attempt to depict the unhappy young man's sensations, which were as confused as those that overwhelm a madman's brain. For a long time he lay in the same position, without daring to turn his head.
Edward summoned a deputation from the London merchants and traders, before whom Adam appeared and explained his device. But these practical men at first ridiculed the notion as a madman's fancy, and it required all the art of Hastings to overcome their contempt, and appeal to the native acuteness of the king.
Except for the mad embers of the eyes, one might have said that the room held three dead bodies. At least he had sent them on to a judgment from which they could not escape with iniquitous smiles. Then a sudden doubt assailed him. Were they, after all, dead? He came to his foot, moving with the spasmodic jerkiness of his condition, but with all the augmented strength of a madman's power.
Suddenly an angel touched him, and in great pain he turned aside into a rugged, difficult path. At the end of it he shrank back at the sound of a voice, shrank back until he knew that the voice spoke words of praise and confidence and honour; and a hand, clean as men's hands seldom are, grasped his in friendship." The madman's hand was stretched out to him, and Fellowes took it.
Whatever the reason, it is certain that the natives amongst whom the poor madman's lot had thus been cast, treated him in an exceptional manner, and with an amount of respect that almost amounted to reverence.
Once during that time they heard the madman's wailing cry, and hardly had they finished and concealed themselves in the gloom of the old cabin when it came again, this time from not more than a rifle-shot's distance beyond the cataract.
"But he's mad!" he protested. "Mad, poor fellow! Merciful heavens, Mr. Hewitt, his whole tale must have been a delusion! A mere madman's fancy! Poor fellow! We must go back, Mr. Hewitt we really must! We can't leave that poor girl there alone with a raving maniac!" "No," Hewitt insisted, "come to the rectory. That is no madness, Mr. Potswood.
I anticipated that it would be among those clumps of scrub that we should eventually find the treasure hulk, if indeed the craft actually existed and was not the figment of a madman's imagination; and I also foresaw that our search for the hulk might easily be a very much more arduous and protracted affair than I had anticipated, for it appeared to me that every one of those clumps big enough to conceal the hull of a five-hundred-ton hulk ought to be examined.
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