.
The yacht to experiment from fitted in beautifully. But now all that's
knocked on the head."

"Why?" I asked. "It seems to me, Garnesk, that you are doing all the
thinking in this affair, as if you had been used to it all your life.
Your only trouble is that you're too modest. I take it that because
you didn't see the yacht when you noticed the green flash you are
taking it for granted you were wrong to expect it. I must say, old
chap, I think you've done thundering well, as the General would put
it, and even if you are prepared to admit your theory has been
knocked on the head I'm not--at any rate, not until I have a jolly
good reason. Yet it doesn't seem to matter much what I say or do if
I'm going to faint like a girl at the first sign of danger. If you
hadn't come to my rescue I might still be lying there waiting to come
round, or something," I finished in disgust.

My companion looked at me thoughtfully.

"Ewart," he said, and solemnly shook his head, "you have brought me to
the very thing that made me say my theory was exploded."

"What thing?" I asked. "Surely my fainting can't have made any
difference to conclusions you had already come to?"

"But then you see," my friend replied, "you didn't faint. And if I had
not seen you were in difficulties you would probably never have
recovered."

"Didn't faint?" I exclaimed. "Well, I don't know what the medical term
for it is, and I daresay there are several technical phrases for the
girlish business I went through. That idea of being dumb was simply
imagination, but I assure you it was just what I should call a
fainting fit."

"I don't want to alarm you if you're not feeling well," he began
apologetically.

"Go on," I urged. "I'm as fit as I ever was."

"Well," the young specialist responded, in a serious tone, "if you
want to know the truth, Ewart, you were suffocated."

"Suffocated!" I shouted, jumping to my feet. "What in heaven's name do
you mean?"

"I can't tell you exactly what I mean because I don't know, but yours
was certainly not an ordinary fainting fit. To put the whole thing in
non-medical terms, you were practically drowned on dry land!"

I sat down again--heavily at that. Should we never come to an end of
these mysterious attacks which were hurled at us in broad daylight
from nowhere at all?

"I'm not sure that you hadn't better rest before we go into this
fully, Ewart," Garnesk remarked doubtfully. "You're not by any means
as fit as