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narrowly escaped!—as might one crawl over the lip of that fiery Pit into which one had been cast, blameless before, castigated and reviled afterward. I gaped at the swarthy visage of the apparition in front of me and heard again the long-forgotten voice of my manservant, Creff, speaking those words which had initiated my fall from Grace, headlong into Chaos and Despair:
    Mr. Dower, sir, there is a crazed Ethiope at the door, presumably to buy a watch.
    For indeed it was that author of my misfortunes who stood there in the glow cast by the room’s lantern, the figure I had once known only as the Brown Leather Man.

CHAPTER
3
On the Ecclesiastical
Tendencies of
Sea-Going Mammals
    O R perhaps not.
    As I regained consciousness—for I had swooned in a dead faint and fallen backward—I discerned a fairer face hovering above me, possessing thin, blondish whiskers and skin no darker than my own or any other Englishman’s. He seemed at least a few years younger than me.
“Are you all right, Mr. Dower? Here, let me help you up.”
    I took the gentleman’s hand and allowed him to assist me into a sitting position at the edge of the bed. The back of my skull felt a little tender as I rubbed it, though a glance downward indicated that the rotting floorboards had suffered more damage from the impact than had I myself.
    “I appear to have taken you by surprise,” spoke my visitor. “You have my apologies.”
    “Quite all right.” With an upraised hand, I waved off further attention. “Accept my apology, instead. I have been lately . . . stressed.”
    He smiled. “That comes as no surprise to me. I am rather more familiar with your affairs than you might imagine possible of a stranger.”
    I let that remark pass. At one time, the whole world had seemed concerned about my comings and goings; if only one person was so caught up in them now, that was an improvement.
    As my vision cleared, I examined more closely my unexpected visitor. My senses were still confused by the persis tence of the briny odour in the room, but that mystery was partly dispelled by the sight of the pool of sea-water spreading out from where he stood, its diameter increased by the rivulets still trickling from the dark, rubbery garment in which he was clad from neck to toe. Such had been the cause of my mistaking the gentleman for that rather less human creature, in origin if not form, who had come wetly traipsing to my Clerkenwell watch shop years ago. Of course, for he whom I had named in my mind as the Brown Leather Man, the function of the similarly encasing attire had been to keep the sea-water inside, as one of his aquatic origin could not survive without. (Though if any of his breed were still alive now, in their submerged habitat off the remote Orkney Islands, that would have come as equal surprise; a degree of this latest shock came from the apprehension that one dead had turned up on the room’s door sill, enquiring after its tenant, as though the Angel of Death had decided to meet me halfway.) Whereas for this gentleman, more recognizably of English stock, the garment’s purpose was to fend off the ocean. I had read of such enthusiasts, and even seen representations of the distinctive gear they had crafted for themselves, which made possible deep immersion in our nation’s chilly coastal waters. The diving garment’s hood, which I had taken for that which had hidden the Brown Leather Man’s true and unimaginable face from me, was now pulled loose from the matching seam at his throat, so that it might dangle flaccid at his back. A narrow tube of black India rubber hung coiled at his belt. This was undoubtedly a necessary part of the apparatus which allowed him to breathe while submerged, a perforated float carrying the open end to the water’s surface.
    While relieved that I had been accosted by neither the dead or one other than human, I remained of a perplexity as to why someone garbed for marine exploration would want to talk to me.