'
We kept the captain to dinner, and gathered a good deal more
understanding of the important position to which Clarence had risen
by force of character and rectitude of purpose in that strange
little Anglo-Chinese colony; and afterwards, I was allowed to make a
long visit to Clarence, who, having eaten and slept, was quite ready
to talk.
It seemed that the great distress of his illness had been the
recurrence--nay, aggravation--of the strange susceptibility of brain
and nerve that had belonged to his earlier days, and with it either
imagination or perception of the spirit-world. Much that had seemed
delirium had belonged to that double consciousness, and he perfectly
recollected it. As Coles had said, the sights and sounds of the
ship had been a renewal of the saddest time in his life; he could
not at night divest himself of the impression that he was under
arrest, and the sins of his life gathered themselves in fearful and
oppressive array, as if to stifle him, and the phantom of poor
Margaret with her lamp--which had haunted him from the beginning of
his illness--seemed to taunt him with having been too fainthearted
and tardy to be worthy to espouse her cause. The faith to which he
tried to cling WOULD seem to fail him in those awful hours, when he
could only cry out mechanical prayers for mercy. Then there had
come a night when he had heard my mother say, 'All right now; God
Almighty bless him.
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