About five o'clock he awoke and
got up; the heat of the day was over. He took a long draught of
cold tea, which is the most refreshing and the coolest drink in the
world. The sun was now getting low, and the air was growing cool.
He put on his helmet, and set off again to walk round his domain.
This done, he bathed again. Then he went home as the sun sank, and
night fell instantly without the intervention of twilight. They
served him dinner, which was like his breakfast but for the addition
of some cutlets. He took his coffee; he took a pipe--two pipes,
slowly, with a book; he took a whisky-and-soda; and he went to bed.
I have said that he had no watch; it hung idly on a nail; therefore
he knew not the time, but it would very likely be about half-past
nine. However that might be, he was the last person up in this
ghostly Island of the Anonymous Dead.
This doctor, captain-general, and commandant of Quarantine Island
was none other than the young man who began this history with a
row royal and a kingly rage. You think, perhaps, that he had turned
hermit in the bitterness of his wrath, and for the faults of one
simple girl had resolved on the life of a solitary.
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