throat, both of which seemed to contract until my breathing became difficult.  I felt half strangled.  I fought against the curious feeling that crept over me, but a dizziness seized me, and I was compelled to clutch the foot of the bed in order to steady myself.

My mouth was burning, my head reeling, while my lower limbs seemed to have, in that moment, become cold, benumbed, and devoid of all feeling. I held my breath, determined to battle against the faintness; but all was useless.  Sharp, acute pains shot through my legs as though red-hot wires were being thrust through my muscles, and a second later I became seized by a kind of paralysis which held my jaws immovable.

I placed my hands to my parched lips and found that they had swollen to an enormous size.  My tongue seemed too large for my mouth, and my throat so small that I could not swallow. My head was swimming, but nevertheless, I strove to calmly consider my situation.  The symptoms were plain enough and could not be mistaken. The Egyptian cigarette which the Major had given me had been strongly impregnated with some deleterious and poisonous substance.

I had, after all, fallen a hapless victim to my enemies, for by moistening the cigarette I had absorbed the poison, and by the rapidity with which my mouth was swelling, I knew that I had been given a fatal dose.  With set teeth, I stood trying to bear up against the sudden paroxysm of agony, but so excruciating was it that it proved too much.  A loud cry escaped me. Writhing in the awful pains that gripped me from head to foot, I grew so weak that my legs refused to support me.  Then, out of sheer exhaustion, I sank upon the floor, and the rest became blotted out in unconsciousness.

CHAPTER FIVE. OUTWARD BOUND.


Strange noises aroused me slowly to a sense of my helplessness.  My head seemed heavy as lead, my brain incapable of receiving any impression, my throat contracted as though by a diphtheritic swelling.

A low continued roaring sounded in my ears, accompanied by a curious unusual jarring.  Slow to fully realize my position, it was some moments before I became convinced that the regular throbbing beneath my head was caused by machinery, and that the steady motion to and fro was the rocking of the waves.

I opened my eyes and found that it was broad daylight.  To the left was a round opening closed by glass--a porthole through which the summer sun was 

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