He dropped the paper, and his eye went seeking. “Ah!” he said, and caught up the St. James’ Gazette, lying folded up as it arrived. “Now we shall get at the truth,” said Dr. Kemp. He rent the paper open; a couple of columns confronted him. “An Entire Village in Sussex goes Mad” was the heading.

“Good Heavens!” said Kemp, reading eagerly an incredulous account of the events in Iping, of the previous afternoon, that have already been described. Over the leaf the report in the morning paper had been reprinted.

He re-read it. “Ran through the streets striking right and left. Jaffers insensible. Mr. Huxter in great pain — still unable to describe what he saw. Painful humiliation — vicar. Woman ill with terror! Windows smashed. This extraordinary story probably a fabrication. Too good not to print — cum grano!”

He dropped the paper and stared blankly in front of him. “Probably a fabrication!”

He caught up the paper again, and re-read the whole business. “But when does the Tramp come in? Why the deuce was he chasing a tramp?”

He sat down abruptly on the surgical bench. “He’s not only invisible,” he said, “but he’s mad! Homicidal!”

When dawn came to mingle its pallor with the lamp-light and cigar smoke of the dining-room, dining Kemp was still pacing up and down, trying to grasp the incredible.

He was altogether too excited to sleep. His servants, descending sleepily, discovered him, and were inclined to think that over-study had worked this ill on him. He gave them extraordinary but quite explicit instructions to lay breakfast for two in the belvedere study — and then to confine themselves to the basement and ground-floor. Then he continued to pace the dining-room until the morning’s paper came. That had much to say and little to tell, beyond the confirmation of the evening before, and a very badly written account of another remarkable tale from Port Burdock. This gave Kemp the essence of the happenings at the “Jolly Cricketers,” and the name of Marvel. “He has made me keep with him twenty-four hours,” Marvel testified. Certain minor facts were added to the Iping story, notably the cutting of the village telegraph-wire. But there was nothing to throw light on the connexion between the Invisible Man and the Tramp; for Mr. Marvel had supplied no information about the three books, or the money with which he was lined. The incredulous tone had vanished and a shoal of reporters and inquirers were already at work elaborating the matter.

Kemp read every scrap of the report and sent his housemaid out to get everyone of the morning papers she could. These also he devoured.

“He is invisible!” he said. “And it reads like rage growing to mania! The things he may do! The things he may do! And he’s upstairs free as the air. What on earth ought I to do?”

“For instance, would it be a breach of faith if — ? No.”

The captain made us trim the boat, and we got her to lie a little more evenly. All the same, we were afraid to breathe.

In the second place, the ebb was now making—a strong rippling current running westward through the basin, and then south’ard and seaward down the straits by which we had entered in the morning. Even the ripples were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of it was that we were swept out of our true course and away from our proper landing–place behind the point. If we let the current have its way we should come ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear at any moment.

“I cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir,” said I to the captain. I was steering, while he and Redruth, two fresh men, were at the oars. “The tide keeps washing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?”

“Not without swamping the boat,” said he. “You must bear up, sir, if you please—bear up until you see you’re gaining.”

I tried and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping us westward until I had laid her head due east, or just about right angles to the way we ought to go.

“We’ll never get ashore at this rate,” said I.

“If it’s the only course that we can lie, sir, we must even lie it,” returned the captain. “We must keep upstream. You see, sir,” he went on, “if once we dropped to leeward of the landing–place, it’s hard to say where we should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by the gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken, and then we can dodge back along the shore.”

“The current’s less a’ready, sir,” said the man Gray, who was sitting in the fore–sheets; “you can ease her off a bit.”

“Thank you, my man,” said I, quite as if nothing had happened, for we had all quietly made up our minds to treat him like one of ourselves.

Suddenly the captain spoke up again, and I thought his voice was a little changed.

“The gun!” said he.

“I have thought of that,” said I, for I made sure he was thinking of a bombardment of the fort. “They could never get the gun ashore, and if they did, they could never haul it through the woods.”

“Look astern, doctor,” replied the captain.

We had entirely forgotten the long nine; and there, to our horror, were the five rogues busy about her, getting off her jacket, as they called the stout tarpaulin cover under which she sailed. Not only that, but it flashed into my mind at the same moment that the round–shot and the powder for the gun had been left behind, and a stroke with an axe would put it all into the possession of the evil ones abroad.

“Israel was Flint’s gunner,” said Gray hoarsely.

At any risk, we put the boat’s head direct for the landing–place. By this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was that with the course I now held we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the HISPANIOLA and offered a target like a barn door.