"I feel positively certain that he came down here by the nine o'clock train." We drove from shipping-office to shipping-office, and made the most careful inquiries, but in every case without success.

Once we thought we had discovered our man, only to find, after wasting a precious hour, that the clerk's description was altogether a wrong one, and that he resembled Hayle in no sort of way.

We boarded the South African mail-boat, but he was not among her passengers; we overhauled the American liner, with an equally barren result.

We paid cursory visits to the principal hotels, but could hear no tidings of him in any one of them.

As a matter of fact, if the man had journeyed to Southampton, as I had every reason to suppose he had done, he must have disappeared into thin air when he got there.