“I am sure of it.”

There was a moment’s pause.  “That’s worse, far worse than anything material,” he said, turning visibly paler.  He looked from my face to the sky, and then added with sudden resolution, “Come; the wind’s rising.  Let’s get off at once.  From there you can telephone to Stockholm and get a telegram sent without delay.”

I sent him down to get the boat ready, and seized the opportunity myself to run and wake Maloney.  He was sleeping very lightly, and sprang up the moment I put my head inside his tent.  I told him briefly what I had seen, and he showed so little surprise that I caught myself wondering for the first time whether he himself had seen more going on than he had deemed wise to communicate to the rest of us.

He agreed to my plan without a moment’s hesitation, and my last words to him were to let his wife and daughter think that the great psychic doctor was coming merely as a chance visitor, and not with any professional interest.

So, with frying-pan, provisions, and blankets aboard, Sangree and I sailed out of the lagoon fifteen minutes later, and headed with a good breeze for the direction of Waxholm and the borders of civilisation.

IV

Although nothing John Silence did ever took me, properly speaking, by surprise, it was certainly unexpected to find a letter from Stockholm waiting for me.  “I have finished my Hungary business,” he wrote, “and am here for ten days.  Do not hesitate to send if you need me.  If you telephone any morning from Waxholm I can catch the afternoon steamer.”

My years of intercourse with him were full of “coincidences” of this description, and although he never sought to explain them by claiming any magical system of communication with my mind, I have never doubted that there actually existed some secret telepathic method by which he knew my circumstances and gauged the degree of my need.  And that this power was independent of time in the sense that it saw into the future, always seemed to me equally apparent.

Sangree was as much relieved as I was, and within an hour of sunset that very evening we met him on the arrival of the little coasting steamer, and carried him off in the dinghy to the camp we had prepared on a neighbouring island, meaning to start for home early next morning.

“Now,” he said, when supper was over and we were smoking round the fire, “let me hear your story.”  He glanced from one to the other, smiling.

“You tell it, Mr. Hubbard,” Sangree interrupted abruptly, and went off a little way to wash the dishes, yet not so far as to be out of earshot.  And while he splashed with the hot water, and scraped the tin plates with sand and moss, my voice, unbroken by a single question from Dr. Silence, ran on for the next half-hour with the best account I could give of what had happened.