Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 5).djvu/147

 bright eyes, with a face a-work with the conflict of twenty mad passions and sensations. Then bursting into a loud, insane laugh, he caught the harbour-master by the arm, and in a low voice and a sickening, transforming leer of cunning, said: "Come, let's go and look at it."

We went below. We were six, including two Custom House officers. We followed the poor madman, who grasped the harbour-master's arm, and on arriving at his cabin we stood at the door of it. He seemed heedless of our presence, but on his taking the pistol-case from the portmanteau, the two Customs men sprang forward.

"That must be searched by us," one cried, and in a minute they had it.

With the swiftness of experienced hands they found and pressed the spring of the pistol, the silver plate flew open, and out dropped a fragment of thick, common glass, just as Captain North had described the thing. It fell upon the deck. The Major sprang, picked it up, and pocketed it.

"Her Majesty will not be disappointed, after all," said he, with a courtly bow to us, "and the commission the Maharajah's honoured me with shall be fulfilled."

The poor gentleman was taken ashore that afternoon, and his luggage followed him. He was certified mad by the medical man at Cape Town, and was to be retained there, as I understood, till the arrival of a steamer for England. It was an odd, bewildering incident from top to bottom. No doubt this particular delusion was occasioned by the poor fellow, whose mind was then fast decaying, reading about the transmission of the Koh-i-noor, and musing about it with a madman's proneness to dwell upon little things.