He tried to find his way home, but missed it; not so much,
however, but that he recovered it as soon as it began to clear, and
just as they were coming out to look for him, he appeared before them,
dripping, shivering, very pale and worn, with the handkerchief still
about his head.
At sight of him, Dick slipped back to his sister, and said, rather
roughly, "There now, you may leave off crying: he is come home; and
to-morrow I take him to Cape Town."
Christopher crept in, a dismal, sinister figure.
"Oh, sir," said Phoebe, "was this a day for a Christian to be out in?
How could you go and frighten us so?"
"Forgive me, madam," said Christopher humbly; "I was not myself."
"The best thing you can do now is to go to bed, and let us send you up
something warm."
"You are very good," said Christopher, and retired with the air of one
too full of great amazing thoughts to gossip.
He slept thirty hours at a stretch, and then, awaking in the dead of
night, he saw the past even more clear and vivid; he lighted his candle
and began to grope in the Cape Gazette. As to dates, he now remembered
when he had sailed from England, and also from Madeira. Following up
this clew, he found in the Gazette a notice that H.
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