iolent fit
of rage, brought on by drink and a remark of his wife's that had she
married Colonel Monk she "would have been a happy woman," burst a small
blood-vessel in his head, with the strange result that from a raging
animal of a man he had been turned into an amiable and perfectly
harmless imbecile. Under so trying a domestic blow, naturally, Mary
explained, Colonel Monk felt it to be his duty to support and comfort
his old friend to the best of his ability. "This," added Mary, "he does
for about three hours every day. I believe, indeed, that a place is
always laid for him at meals, while poor Sir Jonah, for whom I feel
quite sorry, although he was such a horrid man, sits in an armchair and
smiles at him continually."

So Morris determined to take the advice which Mary gave him very
plainly, and abandoned all idea of returning to Beaulieu, at any rate,
on this side of Christmas. His plans settled, he went to work with a
will, and was soon deeply absorbed in the manufacture of experimental
receivers made from the new substance. So completely, indeed, did these
possess his mind that, as Mary at last complained, his letters to her
might with equal fitness have been addressed to an electrical journal,
since from them even diagrams were not lacking.

So things went on until the event occurred which was destined profoundly
and mysteriously to affect the lives of Morris and his affianced wife.
That event was the shipwreck of the steam tramp, Trondhjem, upon the
well-known Sunk Rocks outside the Sands which run parallel to the coast
at a distance of about five knots from the Monksland cliff. In this year
of our story, about the middle of November, the weather set in very
mild and misty. It was the third of these "roky" nights, and the sea-fog
poured along the land like vapour from an opened jar of chemicals.
Morris was experimenting at the forge in his workshop very late--or,
rather early, for it was near to two o'clock in the morning--when of a
sudden through the open window, rising from the quiet sea beneath, he
heard the rattle of oars in rowlocks. Wondering what a boat could be
doing so near inshore at a season when there was no night fishing, he
went to the window to listen. Presently he caught the sound of voices
shouting in a tongue with which he was unacquainted, followed by another
sound, that of a boat being beached upon the shingle immediately below
the Abbey. Now guessing that something unusual must have happen