“Not quite so badly,” said Kemp, “but I can imagine it.”

“I could have smashed the silly devils. At last, faint with the desire for tasteful food, I went into another place and demanded a private room. ‘I am disfigured,’ I said. ‘Badly.’ They looked at me curiously, but of course it was not their affair — and so at last I got my lunch. It was not particularly well served, but it sufficed; and when I had had it, I sat over a cigar, trying to plan my line of action. And outside a snowstorm was beginning.

“The more I thought it over, Kemp, the more I realised realised what a helpless absurdity an Invisible Man was — in a cold and dirty climate and a crowded civilised city. Before I made this mad experiment I had dreamt of a thousand advantages. That afternoon it seemed all disappointment. I went over the heads of the things a man reckons desirable. No doubt invisibility made it possible to get them, but it made it impossible to enjoy them when they are got. Ambition — what is the good of pride of place when you cannot appear there? What is the good of the love of woman when her name must needs be Delilah? I have no taste taste for politics, for the blackguardisms of fame, for philanthropy, for sport. What was I to do? And for this I had become a wrapped-up mystery, a swathed and bandaged caricature of a man!”

He paused, and his attitude suggested a roving glance at the window.

“But how did you get to Iping?” said Kemp, anxious to keep his guest busy talking.

“I went there to work. I had one hope. It was a half idea! I have it still. It is a full blown idea now. A way of getting back! Of restoring what I have done. When I choose. When I have done all I mean to do invisibly. invisibly And that is what I chiefly want to talk to you about now.”

“You went straight to Iping?”

“Yes. I had simply to get my three volumes of memoranda and my cheque-book, my luggage and underclothing, order a quantity of chemicals to work out this idea of mine — I will show you the calculations as soon as I get my books — and then I started. Jove! I remember the snowstorm now, and the accursed bother it was to keep the snow from damping my pasteboard nose.”

“At the end,” said Kemp, “the day before yesterday, when they found you out, you rather — to judge by the papers papers — ”

“I did. Rather. Did I kill that fool of a constable?”

“No,” said Kemp. “He’s expected to recover.”

“That’s his luck, then. I clean lost my temper, the fools! Why couldn’t they leave me alone? And that grocer lout?”

“There are no deaths expected,” said Kemp.

“I don’t know about that tramp of mine,” said the Invisible Man, with an unpleasant laugh.

“By Heaven, Kemp, you don’t know what rage is! ... To have worked for years, to have planned and plotted, and then to get some fumbling purblind idiot messing across your course! ... Every conceivable sort of silly creature that has ever been created has been sent to cross cross me.

Before supper was eaten we buried old Tom in the sand and stood round him for a while bare–headed in the breeze. A good deal of firewood had been got in, but not enough for the captain’s fancy, and he shook his head over it and told us we “must get back to this tomorrow rather livelier.” Then, when we had eaten our pork and each had a good stiff glass of brandy grog, the three chiefs got together in a corner to discuss our prospects.

It appears they were at their wits’ end what to do, the stores being so low that we must have been been starved into surrender long before help came. But our best hope, it was decided, was to kill off the buccaneers until they either hauled down their flag or ran away with the HISPANIOLA. From nineteen they were already reduced to fifteen, two others were wounded, and one at least— the man shot beside the gun—severely wounded, if he were not dead. Every time we had a crack at them, we were to take it, saving our own lives, with the extremest care. And besides that, we had two able allies—rum and the climate.

As for the first, though we were about half a mile away, we could hear them roaring and singing late into the night; and as for the second, the doctor staked his wig that, camped where they were in the marsh and unprovided with remedies, the half of them would be on their backs before a week.

“So,” he added, “if we are not all shot down first they’ll be glad to be packing in the schooner. It’s always a ship, and they can get to buccaneering again, I suppose.”

“First ship that ever I lost,” said Captain Smollett.

I was dead tired, as you may fancy; and when I got to sleep, which was not till after a great deal of tossing, I slept like a log of wood.

The rest had long been up and had already breakfasted and increased the pile of firewood by about half as much again when I was wakened by a bustle and the sound of voices.

“Flag of truce!” I heard someone say; and then, immediately after, with a cry of surprise, “Silver himself!”

And at that, up I jumped, and rubbing my eyes, ran to a loophole in the wall.

SURE enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them waving a white cloth, the other, no less a person than Silver himself, standing placidly by.

It was still quite early, and the coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in—a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee–deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot.

“Keep indoors, men,” said the captain. “Ten to one this is a trick.”

Then he hailed the buccaneer.

“Who goes? Stand, or we fire.”