byThe thin little man in the blue coat with the tarnished gold braid sat at the desk in his cabin and wished for fatigue to overwhelm him. He was tired, tired with a fatigue which had been creeping slowly upon him in recent years—and had come on apace in the past few months. Now it was in his very bones.
It was the cold fatigue of an old man—and he was far from old as the world counted years.
He eyed the gleaming bottle of black West Indian rum that stood in its barricaded tray on the table to his left, and his blue eyes lit with a gleam of purpose. Forgetfulness, even sleep, lay in its turbid depths.
But such sleep was not for him with the night already so far spent. The morrow lay close upon him, the morrow toward which his every faculty had been sternly impelled for so many long and
