Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/116

100 exercise, and drive all  'papillons noirs'  out of your head. These are my orders, not only as magistrate, but as your physician."

Gell sighed, but I would not listen to his protests, and two days after I sent him off in Dana's charge on this cruise, which I had long intended to organize, but which might have been indefinitely postponed but for his hallucinations, which gave me great anxiety.

When he was gone I deliberately reviewed what he had said, in order to satisfy myself whether there could be the slightest ground for his strange fancy, but soon came to the inevitable conclusion that it could only be due to a disordered brain. Short of having witnessed her actual fate, no evidence could be more absolutely conclusive.

So Gell and Dana and a picked crew sailed away, and were absent for some six weeks, during which time I had the whole care of the community on my shoulders. On their return I was pleased to find that not only had they enriched our stock of plants by a large number of invaluable specimens of nutritious and medicinal qualities, but that Gell had recovered his tone and spirits, although never quite the same