Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/89

Rh of unrest. Any hour the ship might sail; any hour something which would give me the name of her owner might come to me—but the hours went on and nothing came. I dined, and was no step advanced; I smoked cigars in three cafés, and was again at the beginning; I visited half-a-dozen folk I knew, and drew no word to help me. At last, mocking the whole mystery with a fine English phrase, I said, 'Let her go'; and I returned to the Albergo and to bed. I had hunted a marine covert for two days and had drawn blank.

"I have said that I went to bed, but it was a poor folly of a process, you do not doubt. I lay down, indeed, and read Poe's tales, which I love, an hour or more; then I went over the whole business again, raised every point; made my brain aflame with speculation; put out the candle; lit it again; read more mystery; held out the hand to sleep; told sleep I did not want her. You who know me will know also how useless are such gamings of man with Nature. I could not have slept if a king's ransom went with the sleeping; and so I lay fretful, blameful, scolding myself, condoling with myself, vowing the whole problem a plague and a cheat. This idle wandering might have lasted until dawn, had it not been for my neighbour in the room to my left, who began to talk with a low buzz as of a night-insect humming in a