HIS STORY.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 218, 20 August 1878, Page 3

HIS STORY.

It happened to myself. I was engaged at the London hospital then, and my duty was to smother people that didn't seem likely to get better when the beds wore wanted. I used to do it in the middle of the night with the pillow. It's a regular thing in the. hospitals, you know. Well, one night I was just going to create accommodation for one, when my hand was seized from behind. It was one of the nurses. " Not him," said she ; " here, I want you." She slipped a fiver into my hand, and led me to an open casement. With the moonlight streaming on her raven tresses she told me a fearful tale. " He was in love with me once," she said, " and I don't want him murdered ; besides he has a mission to accomplish, and he'll get better." " What's his mission ?" I said. She drew me from the ray of the moonbeams into the dark shadows that fell upon the wall.

" He has a torpedo in his inside." •" Impossible ! " I exclaimed, preparing to dive under a bed. "Do not be afraid, " she exclaimed ; "it is one of his own invention. He made it no bigger than a pill, and swallowed it by mistake. It has made him very ill, but so long as he lives it will remain intact, if he dies by violence' it will explode. '" " Then he musn't die here !" " Certainly not; he wants to utilise his invention for the benefit of society. To-morrow he will be removed in a cab to his residence. There he proposes to manufacture torpedo pills for the million. They will regenerate society. People will be able to live unmolested and at peace. No man will dare to kick his wife for fear of exploding her torpedo. No cabman will dare to run over a pedestrian lest he be blown to atoms. Murder will mean the immediate execution of the assassin. War will be impossible ; the killing of the enemy's soldiers will be the annihilation of your own troops. The torpedo pill will be harmless during an unmolested fife and a quiet death, but deadly the moment violence is attempted." " Ahl what was that?" Terrified by the nurse's exclamation, I listened. For a moment there was a hissing sound from one of the beds, and then —and then, a loud report! The hospital shook to its foundation, the walls rocked the roof went up in the air, and the building collapsed—aheap of crumbling ruins. The man with the torpedo had gone off. How we escaped, I don't know ; but the nurse and myself were found senseless outside a public house in the next street by two policemen. We have talked it over since, and we think the man struck himself on the chest accidentally. His loss was a loss to humanity, for no one possesses the secret of his torpedo pills.