"Pringle, I shall go down to Marhyddoc by the next fast train."
"There is one at ten in the morning, sir."
"That will suit me. Mr. Byrne and I have sundry business transactions together which necessitate my seeing him as soon as possible. I need not tell you how annoyed I am to find that he has gone away without leaving a message of any kind for me."
He paused and looked at his watch. "I am terribly tired, and I must try to get a few hours' sleep before starting. You are a light sleeper, I know, and I will trust you to call me at six."
"You may also see Mrs. Bakewell for me, and arrange for breakfast at eight. You had better sleep here to-night, and I will go through the remaining letters with you during breakfast."
Then, without another word, he left the room and marched slowly upstairs to bed. Van Duren had spoken no more than the truth when he said that he was terribly tired. He had been travelling continuously for eighteen hours, and was thoroughly worn out. The news told him by Pringle had taken away whatever appetite he might otherwise have had, while leaving the need of some refreshment strongly upon him. He was never without cognac in his bedroom. Of this he now took a powerful dose, and then flinging himself upon the bed, dressed as he was, in three minutes he was fast asleep.
While sleeping thus, he had a dream--a dream more strangely vivid, more realistic in all its details, than any that he had ever had before.
In this dream he himself was as it were an impersonal being, the spectator of a drama in which he was called upon to play no part. The scene of the drama in question was the bottom of the sea. Through the green and limpid twilight, the floor, covered with sand and shells, and huge, smooth-washed boulders, could be seen stretching away on every side till lost in the dim distance. Fishes of various kinds, some such as are never seen by mortal eye, swam silently to and fro in the liquid depths. The middle distance of the sea was filled up with a huge mass of wreckage and broken timber. There was no need to tell the dreamer of what good ship the wreck was now before him. Even in his sleep, his lips murmured, "That is the _Albatross_." In and out of the broken bulks, and rotting portholes, and shattered hatchways, strange monsters of the sea, big and little, kept crawling continually.