I could leave England tomorrow and visit the most beautiful places on the earth: those places I had longed and determined to see. Now, I knew I should never see them, and I groaned in anguish at the thought.

My limbs were strong. I could bear fatigue and exposure. I could hold my own with the best walkers and the swiftest runners. The chase, the sport, the trial of endurance had never been too long or too arduous for me—I passed my left hand over my right arm and felt the muscles firm as of old. Yet I was as helpless as Samson in his captivity.

For, even as Samson, I was blind!

Blind! Who but the victim can even faintly comprehend the significance of that word? Who can read this and gauge the depth of my anguish as I turned and turned on my pillow and thought of the fifty years of darkness which might be mine—a thought which made me wish that when I fell asleep it might be to wake no more?

Blind! After hovering around me for years the demon of darkness had at last laid his hand upon me. After letting me, for a while, almost cheat myself into security, he had swept down upon me, folded me in his sable wings and blighted my life. Fair forms, sweet sights, bright colours, gay scenes mine no more! He claimed them all, leaving darkness, darkness, ever darkness! Far better to die, and, it may be, wake in a new world of light—‘Better,’ I cried in my despair, ‘better even the dull red glare of Hades than the darkness of the world!’

This last gloomy thought of mine shows the state of mind to which I was reduced.

The truth is that, in spite of hope held out to me, I had resolved to be hopeless. For years I had felt that my foe was lying in wait for me. Often when gazing on some beautiful object, some fair scene, the right to enjoy which made one fully appreciate the gift of sight, a whisper seemed to reach my ear—‘Some day I will strike again, then it will be all over.’ I tried to laugh at my fears, but could never quite get rid of the presentiment of evil. My enemy had struck once—why not again?

Well I can remember his first appearance—his first attack. I remember a light-hearted schoolboy so engrossed in sport and study that he scarcely noticed how strangely dim the sight of one eye was getting, or the curious change which was taking place in its appearance. I remember the boy’s father taking him to London, to a large dull-looking house in a quiet dull street. I remember our waiting in a room in which were several other people; most of whom had shades or bandages over their eyes. Such a doleful gathering it was that I felt much relieved when we were conducted to another room in which sat a kind, pleasant-spoken man, called by my father Mr Jay. This eminent man, after applying something which I know now was belladonna to my eyes, and which had the effect for a short time of wonderfully improving my sight, peered into my eyes by the aid of strong lenses and mirrors—I remember at the time wishing some of those lenses were mine—what splendid burning glasses they would make! Then he placed me with my back to the window and held a lighted candle before my face. All these proceedings seemed so funny that I was half inclined to laugh. My father’s grave, anxious face alone restrained me from so doing. As soon as Mr Jay had finished his researches he turned to my father—

‘Hold the candle as I held it. Let it shine into the right eye first. Now, Mr Vaughan, what do you see? How many candles, I mean?’

‘Three—the one in the centre small and bright, but upside down.’

‘Yes; now try the other eye. How many there?’

My father looked long and carefully.

‘I can only see one,’ he said, ‘the large one.’

‘This is called the catoptric test, an old-fashioned but infallible test, now almost superseded. The boy is suffering from lenticular cataract.’

This terribly sounding name took away all my wish to laugh. I glanced at my father and was surprised to notice his face wearing an expression of relief.

‘That may be cured by an operation,’ he said.

‘Certainly; but in my judgment it is not well to meddle, so long as the other eye remains unaffected.’

‘Is there danger?’

‘There is always danger of the disease appearing in the sound eye; but, of course, it may not happen. Come to me at the first sign of such a thing. Good morning.’

The great specialist bowed us out, and I returned to my school life, troubling little about the matter, as it caused me no pain, and, although in less than a twelve-month the sight of one eye was completely obscured, I could see well enough for every purpose with the remaining one.

But I remembered every word of that diagnosis, although it was years before I recognized the importance of it. It was only when compelled by an accident to wear for some days a bandage over my sound eye that I realized the danger in which I stood, and from that moment felt that a merciless foe was ever waiting his time.

And now the time had come. In the first flush of my manhood, with all that one could wish for at my command, the foe had struck again.

He came upon me swiftly—far more swiftly than is his custom in such cases; yet it was long before I would believe the worst—long before I would confess to myself that my failing sight and the increasing fogginess of everything I looked at were due to more than a temporary weakness. I was hundreds of miles from home, in a country where travelling is slow. A friend being with me, I had no wish to make myself a nuisance by cutting our expedition short.