The vampire nemesis and other weird stories of the China coast by Dolly Page A

and as we bore up in the direction of Eddy Island, the og continued as impenetrably dense as before. To my wayward fancy, it seemed like the hand of a protecting Providence hiding my tracks from the ken of my malevolent pursuer.

    We reached Chefoo and put up at the cosy little Beach Hotel; and here for two days life ran smoothly, and I was happy and at ease. On the third I got up early and went alone for a stroll along one of the prettiest stretches of sandy beach the China coast can boast.
    It was a glorious morning; the fresh sea-breeze blew in upon me with a sense of freedom infinitely soothing to my oppressed spirit. Far out, the Kutai Islands were waging their passive war against the encroaching sea, as it boiled and seethed angrily around the rocks on their shore, in its mad endeavour to sweep in on the ships lying so snugly at anchor in the harbour.
    I had intended walking right out to the wall that crests the hill beyond the bay, but soon after passing the schools I stopped in indecision, and stood looking back along the curving sweep of the yellow sands that terminated in the bold headland of Tower Hill, with its shades of green and brown, backed by the sunlit blue of the sea. And as I looked at the few ships that, anchored farther out than the others, peeped coyly round its base, I turned and, hardly aware of what I was doing, commenced to retrace my steps. Upon passing the French ViceConsulate, instead of continuing along the beach as I had come, I turned to the left, going by way of the fields to the custom house jetty in the town.

    Here I paused, gazing restlessly out toward the Bluff and the open sea, until a Japanese steamer, with the " blue-peter " flying at the fore, caught my eye. A jet of steam was issuing from her forecastle head as she hove short her cable, and still blindly obeying the sudden impulse that had brought me thus far, I hastened down the steps, and, jumping into a sampan, directed the boatman to pull with all speed to the outgoing steamer.
    Once on board, I had no need to ask of the astonished captain where she was going. I knew. How could she be bound for any place but Shanghai, since that resistless force had drawn me on board of her ?—drawn me as easily across these four hundred and eighty miles as if I had still been at Shanghai.
    I engaged my passage on board, and tearing a leaf out of my note-book, scribbled a few hurried lines to my wife, telling her I had been recalled to town on a matter of the utmost importance, and directing her to collect our baggage and follow me down by the first steamer. I gave the note with directions to the sampan man who had brought me off; then, as the steamer began to move out from the roads, I went below to the cabin that had been hastily cleared out for my reception, overwhelmed by a shuddering terror I dare not attempt to depict.
    This was the meaning of that note of his. The fiend! He was dragging me back, fight against it as I might, to the bondage I feared and loathed. Dragging me back as surely and relentlessly as the cat, with one cruel paw, claws back the wounded mouse that is trying to crawl beyond her reach.

    I sat down on the settee and cried like a little child. It was the first time I remembered to have shed tears since I entered upon boyhood, but I wept now with the feeling of utter helplessness of a child in the dark.
    I believe, in the numbness of my despair, I would have flung myself over the ship's side and so have ended all. A dozen times during that short voyage, the wish formed itself in my mind and crystallised into resolution, but I dared not carry it out. It was not the constraint of fear, for who would fear a welcome visitor with freedom and rest in his gift ? I had to go to Shanghai, and go I must. Even the last grim remedy, which all Humanity holds itself free to grasp when the burdens of life have become too oppressive to be borne, was denied me.
    The horror of it! That haunting conviction that I was no longer a free