n the floor with that iron collar round
your neck and that chain holding you to the wall, and know that it's, in
a measure, all my stupid, blundering folly that has brought it about."

"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Hatteras!" was the young man's generous reply.
"For whatever or whoever may be to blame for it, I'm sure you're not."

"That's because you don't know everything, my lord. Wait till you have
heard what I have to tell you before you give me such complete
absolution."

"I'm not going to blame you whatever you may tell me; but please go on!"

There and then I set to work and told him all that had happened to me
since my arrival in London; informed him of my meeting with Nikola, of
Wetherell's hasty departure for Australia, of my distrust for Baxter,
described the telegram incident and Baxter's curious behaviour
afterwards, narrated my subsequent meeting with the two men in the
_Green Sailor Hotel_, described my journey to Plymouth, and finished
with the catastrophe that had happened to me there.

"Now you see," I said in conclusion, "why I regard myself as being so
much to blame."

"Excuse me," he answered, "but I cannot say that I see it in the same
light at all."

"I'm afraid I must be more explicit then. In the first place you must
understand that, without a shadow of a doubt, Baxter was chosen for your
tutor by Nikola, whose agent he undoubtedly is, for a specific purpose.
Now what do you think that purpose was? You don't know? To induce your
father to let you travel, to be sure. You ask why they should want you
to travel? We'll come to that directly. Their plan is succeeding
admirably, when I come upon the scene and, like the great blundering
idiot I am, must needs set to work unconsciously to assist them in their
nefarious designs. Your father eventually consents, and it is arranged
that you shall set off for Australia at once. Then it is discovered that
I am going to leave in the same boat. This does not suit Nikola's plans
at all, so he determines to prevent my sailing with you. By a happy
chance he is unsuccessful, and I follow and join the boat in Naples.
Good gracious! I see something else now."

"What is that?"

"Simply this. I could not help thinking at the time that your bout of
sea-sickness between Naples and this infernal place was extraordinary.
Well, if I'm not very much mistaken, _you were physicked, and it was
Baxter's doing_."

"But why?"

"Ah! That's yet to be discovered. But you ma