Being deprived of conjugal superintendence, he broke though his own rules.

His restless hand unlocked a drawer, and took out a manuscript work on medicine of his own writing.

"Surely," he thought, "I may finish a chapter, before I go to sea to-morrow ?" His head, steady enough while he was only looking out of window, began to swim before he had got to the bottom of a page.

The last sentences of the unfinished chapter alluded to a matter of fact which he had not yet verified.

In emergencies of any sort, he was a patient man and a man of resource.