THE SHADOW-LINE

A CONFESSION

By Joseph Conrad

"Worthy of my undying regard"

To Borys And All Others Who, Like Himself, Have Crossed In Early YouthThe Shadow-Line Of Their Generation With Love

PART ONE

--_D'autre fois, calme plat, grand miroir De mon desespoir_. --BAUDELAIRE

I

Only the young have such moments. I don't mean the very young. No. Thevery young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilegeof early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautifulcontinuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. 

One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness--and enters anenchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn ofthe path has its seduction. And it isn't because it is an undiscoveredcountry. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed thatway. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects anuncommon or personal sensation--a bit of one's own. 

One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessors, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together--the kicks andthe half-pence, as the saying is--the picturesque common lot that holdsso many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on--till one perceives ahead ashadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must beleft behind. 

This is the period of life in which such moments of which I have spokenare likely to come. What moments? Why, the moments of boredom, ofweariness, of dissatisfaction. Rash moments. I mean moments when thestill young are inclined to commit rash actions, such as getting marriedsuddenly or else throwing up a job for no reason. 

This is not a marriage story. It wasn't so bad as that with me. Myaction, rash as it was, had more the character of divorce--almost ofdesertion. For no reason on which a sensible person could put a finger Ithrew up my job--chucked my berth--left the ship of which the worst thatcould be said was that she was a steamship and therefore, perhaps, notentitled to that blind loyalty which. . . . However, it's no use tryingto put a gloss on what even at the time I myself half suspected to be acaprice. 

It was in an Eastern port. She was an Eastern ship, inasmuch as thenshe belonged to that port. She traded among dark islands on a bluereef-scarred sea, with the Red Ensign over the taffrail and at hermasthead a house-flag, also red, but with a green border and with awhite crescent in it. For an Arab owned her, and a Syed at that. Hencethe green border on the flag. He was the head of a great House ofStraits Arabs, but as loyal a subject of the complex British Empire asyou could find east of the Suez Canal. World politics did not troublehim at all, but he had a great occult power amongst his own people. 

It was all one to us who owned the ship. He had to employ white men inthe shipping part of his business, and many of those he so employed hadnever set eyes on him from the first to the last day. I myself saw himbut once, quite accidentally on a wharf--an old, dark little man blindin one eye, in a snowy robe and yellow slippers. He was having his handseverely kissed by a crowd of Malay pilgrims to whom he had done somefavour, in the way of food and money. His alms-giving, I have heard, wasmost extensive, covering almost the whole Archipelago. For isn't it saidthat "The charitable man is the friend of Allah"?

Excellent (and picturesque) Arab owner, about whom one needed not totrouble one's head, a most excellent Scottish ship--for she was thatfrom the keep up--excellent sea-boat, easy to keep clean, most handy inevery way, and if it had not been for her internal propulsion, worthy ofany man's love, I cherish to this day a profound respect for her memory. As to the kind of trade she was engaged in and the character of myshipmates, I could not have been happier if I had had the life and themen made to my order by a benevolent Enchanter. 

And suddenly I left all this. I left it in that, to us, inconsequentialmanner in which a bird flies away from a comfortable branch. It wasas though all unknowing I had heard a whisper or seen something. Well--perhaps! One day I was perfectly right and the next everything wasgone--glamour, flavour, interest, contentment--everything. It was oneof these moments, you know. The green sickness of late youth descendedon me and carried me off. Carried me off that ship, I mean. 

We were only four white men on board, with a large crew of Kalashes andtwo Malay petty officers. The Captain stared hard as if wondering whatailed me. But he was a sailor, and he, too, had been young at one time. Presently a smile came to lurk under his thick iron-gray moustache, andhe observed that, of course, if I felt I must go he couldn't keep meby main force. And it was arranged that I should be paid off thenext morning. As I was going out of his cabin he added suddenly, in apeculiar wistful tone, that he hoped I would find what I was so anxiousto go and look for. A soft, cryptic utterance which seemed to reachdeeper than any diamond-hard tool could have done. I do believe heunderstood my case. 

But the second engineer attacked me differently. He was a sturdy youngScot, with a smooth face and light eyes. His honest red countenanceemerged out of the engine-room companion and then the whole robust man, with shirt sleeves turned up, wiping slowly the massive fore-arms witha lump of cotton-waste. And his light eyes expressed bitter distaste, asthough our friendship had turned to ashes. He said weightily: "Oh! Aye!I've been thinking it was about time for you to run away home and getmarried to some silly girl. "

It was tacitly understood in the port that John Nieven was a fiercemisogynist; and the absurd character of the sally convinced me that hemeant to be nasty--very nasty--had meant to say the most crushing thinghe could think of. My laugh sounded deprecatory. Nobody but a friendcould be so angry as that. I became a little crestfallen. Our chiefengineer also took a characteristic view of my action, but in a kindlierspirit. 

He was young, too, but very thin, and with a mist of fluffy brown beardall round his haggard face. All day long, at sea or in harbour, he couldbe seen walking hastily up and down the after-deck, wearing anintense, spiritually rapt expression, which was caused by a perpetualconsciousness of unpleasant physical sensations in his internal economy. For he was a confirmed dyspeptic. His view of my case was very simple. He said it was nothing but deranged liver. Of course! He suggested Ishould stay for another trip and meantime dose myself with a certainpatent medicine in which his own belief was absolute. "I'll tell youwhat I'll do. I'll buy you two bottles, out of my own pocket. There. Ican't say fairer than that, can I?"

I believe he would have perpetrated the atrocity (or generosity) at themerest sign of weakening on my part. By that time, however, I was morediscontented, disgusted, and dogged than ever. The past eighteen months, so full of new and varied experience, appeared a dreary, prosaic wasteof days. I felt--how shall I express it?--that there was no truth to begot out of them. 

What truth? I should have been hard put to it to explain. Probably, ifpressed, I would have burst into tears simply. I was young enough forthat. 

Next day the Captain and I transacted our business in the HarbourOffice. It was a lofty, big, cool, white room, where the screened lightof day glowed serenely. Everybody in it--the officials, the public--werein white. Only the heavy polished desks gleamed darkly in a centralavenue, and some papers lying on them were blue. Enormous punkahs sentfrom on high a gentle draught through that immaculate interior and uponour perspiring heads. 

The official behind the desk we approached grinned amiably and kept itup till, in answer to his perfunctory question, "Sign off and on again?"my Captain answered, "No! Signing off for good. " And then his grinvanished in sudden solemnity. He did not look at me again till hehanded me my papers with a sorrowful expression, as if they had been mypassports for Hades. 

While I was putting them away he murmured some question to the Captain, and I heard the latter answer good-humouredly:

"No. He leaves us to go home. "

"Oh!" the other exclaimed, nodding mournfully over my sad condition. 

I didn't know him outside the official building, but he leaned forwardthe desk to shake hands with me, compassionately, as one would with somepoor devil going out to be hanged; and I am afraid I performed my partungraciously, in the hardened manner of an impenitent criminal. 

No homeward-bound mail-boat was due for three or four days. Being now aman without a ship, and having for a time broken my connection with thesea--become, in fact, a mere potential passenger--it would have beenmore appropriate perhaps if I had gone to stay at an hotel. There itwas, too, within a stone's throw of the Harbour Office, low, but somehowpalatial, displaying its white, pillared pavilions surrounded by trimgrass plots. I would have felt a passenger indeed in there! I gave it ahostile glance and directed my steps toward the Officers' Sailors' Home. 

I walked in the sunshine, disregarding it, and in the shade of the bigtrees on the esplanade without enjoying it. The heat of the tropicalEast descended through the leafy boughs, enveloping my thinly-clad body, clinging to my rebellious discontent, as if to rob it of its freedom. 

The Officers' Home was a large bungalow with a wide verandah and acuriously suburban-looking little garden of bushes and a few treesbetween it and the street. That institution partook somewhat of thecharacter of a residential club, but with a slightly Governmentalflavour about it, because it was administered by the Harbour Office. Itsmanager was officially styled Chief Steward. He was an unhappy, wizenedlittle man, who if put into a jockey's rig would have looked the part toperfection. But it was obvious that at some time or other in his life, in some capacity or other, he had been connected with the sea. Possiblyin the comprehensive capacity of a failure. 

I should have thought his employment a very easy one, but he used toaffirm for some reason or other that his job would be the death of himsome day. It was rather mysterious. Perhaps everything naturally was toomuch trouble for him. He certainly seemed to hate having people in thehouse. 

On entering it I thought he must be feeling pleased. It was as still asa tomb. I could see no one in the living rooms; and the verandah, too, was empty, except for a man at the far end dozing prone in a long chair. At the noise of my footsteps he opened one horribly fish-like eye. Hewas a stranger to me. I retreated from there, and crossing the diningroom--a very bare apartment with a motionless punkah hanging over thecentre table--I knocked at a door labelled in black letters: "ChiefSteward. "

The answer to my knock being a vexed and doleful plaint: "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! What is it now?" I went in at once. 

It was a strange room to find in the tropics. Twilight and stuffinessreigned in there. The fellow had hung enormously ample, dusty, cheaplace curtains over his windows, which were shut. Piles of cardboardboxes, such as milliners and dressmakers use in Europe, cumbered thecorners; and by some means he had procured for himself the sort offurniture that might have come out of a respectable parlour in the EastEnd of London--a horsehair sofa, arm-chairs of the same. I glimpsedgrimy antimacassars scattered over that horrid upholstery, whichwas awe-inspiring, insomuch that one could not guess what mysteriousaccident, need, or fancy had collected it there. Its owner had takenoff his tunic, and in white trousers and a thin, short-sleeved singletprowled behind the chair-backs nursing his meagre elbows. 

An exclamation of dismay escaped him when he heard that I had come for astay; but he could not deny that there were plenty of vacant rooms. 

"Very well. Can you give me the one I had before?"

He emitted a faint moan from behind a pile of cardboard boxes on thetable, which might have contained gloves or handkerchies or neckties. Iwonder what the fellow did keep in them? There was a smell of decayingcoral, or Oriental dust of zoological speciments in that den of his. Icould only see the top of his head and his unhappy eyes levelled at meover the barrier. 

"It's only for a couple of days, " I said, intending to cheer him up. 

"Perhaps you would like to pay in advance?" he suggested eagerly. 

"Certainly not!" I burst out directly I could speak. "Never heard ofsuch a thing! This is the most infernal cheek. . . . "

He had seized his head in both hands--a gesture of despair which checkedmy indignation. 

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Don't fly out like this. I am asking everybody. "

"I don't believe it, " I said bluntly. 

"Well, I am going to. And if you gentlemen all agreed to pay in advanceI could make Hamilton pay up, too. He's always turning up ashore deadbroke, and even when he has some money he won't settle his bills. Idon't know what to do with him. He swears at me and tells me I can'tchuck a white man out into the street here. So if you only would. . . . "

I was amazed. Incredulous, too. I suspected the fellow of gratuitousimpertinence. I told him with marked emphasis that I would see him andHamilton hanged first, and requested him to conduct me to my room withno more of his nonsense. He produced then a key from somewhere and ledthe way out of his lair, giving me a vicious sidelong look in passing. 

"Any one I know staying here?" I asked him before he left my room. 

He had recovered his usual pained impatient tone, and said that CaptainGiles was there, back from a Solo Sea trip. Two other guests werestaying also. He paused. And, of course, Hamilton, he added. 

"Oh, yes! Hamilton, " I said, and the miserable creature took himself offwith a final groan. 

His impudence still rankled when I came into the dining room at tiffintime. He was there on duty overlooking the Chinamen servants. The tiffinwas laid on one end only of the long table, and the punkah was stirringthe hot air lazily--mostly above a barren waste of polished wood. 

We were four around the cloth. The dozing stranger from the chair wasone. Both his eyes were partly opened now, but they did not seem to seeanything. He was supine. The dignified person next him, with short sidewhiskers and a carefully scraped chin, was, of course, Hamilton. I havenever seen any one so full of dignity for the station in life Providencehad been pleased to place him in. I had been told that he regarded me asa rank outsider. He raised not only his eyes, but his eyebrows as well, at the sound I made pulling back my chair. 

Captain Giles was at the head of the table. I exchanged a few words ofgreeting with him and sat down on his left. Stout and pale, with a greatshiny dome of a bald forehead and prominent brown eyes, he might havebeen anything but a seaman. You would not have been surprised to learnthat he was an architect. To me (I know how absurd it is) to me helooked like a churchwarden. He had the appearance of a man from whom youwould expect sound advice, moral sentiments, with perhaps a platitude ortwo thrown in on occasion, not from a desire to dazzle, but from honestconviction. 

Though very well known and appreciated in the shipping world, he hadno regular employment. He did not want it. He had his own peculiarposition. He was an expert. An expert in--how shall I say it?--inintricate navigation. He was supposed to know more about remote andimperfectly charted parts of the Archipelago than any man living. Hisbrain must have been a perfect warehouse of reefs, positions, bearings, images of headlands, shapes of obscure coasts, aspects of innumerableislands, desert and otherwise. Any ship, for instance, bound on a tripto Palawan or somewhere that way would have Captain Giles on board, either in temporary command or "to assist the master. " It was said thathe had a retaining fee from a wealthy firm of Chinese steamship owners, in view of such services. Besides, he was always ready to relieve anyman who wished to take a spell ashore for a time. No owner was everknown to object to an arrangement of that sort. For it seemed to be theestablished opinion at the port that Captain Giles was as good asthe best, if not a little better. But in Hamilton's view he was an"outsider. " I believe that for Hamilton the generalisation "outsider"covered the whole lot of us; though I suppose that he made somedistinctions in his mind. 

I didn't try to make conversation with Captain Giles, whom I had notseen more than twice in my life. But, of course, he knew who I was. After a while, inclining his big shiny head my way, he addressed mefirst in his friendly fashion. He presumed from seeing me there, hesaid, that I had come ashore for a couple of days' leave. 

He was a low-voiced man. I spoke a little louder, saying that: No--I hadleft the ship for good. 

"A free man for a bit, " was his comment. 

"I suppose I may call myself that--since eleven o'clock, " I said. 

Hamilton had stopped eating at the sound of our voices. He laid downhis knife and fork gently, got up, and muttering something about "thisinfernal heat cutting one's appetite, " went out of the room. Almostimmediately we heard him leave the house down the verandah steps. 

On this Captain Giles remarked easily that the fellow had no doubt goneoff to look after my old job. The Chief Steward, who had been leaningagainst the wall, brought his face of an unhappy goat nearer to thetable and addressed us dolefully. His object was to unburden himself ofhis eternal grievance against Hamilton. The man kept him in hot waterwith the Harbour Office as to the state of his accounts. He wishedto goodness he would get my job, though in truth what would it be?Temporary relief at best. 

I said: "You needn't worry. He won't get my job. My successor is onboard already. "

He was surprised, and I believe his face fell a little at the news. Captain Giles gave a soft laugh. We got up and went out on the verandah, leaving the supine stranger to be dealt with by the Chinamen. The lastthing I saw they had put a plate with a slice of pine-apple on it beforehim and stood back to watch what would happen. But the experiment seemeda failure. He sat insensible. 

It was imparted to me in a low voice by Captain Giles that this wasan officer of some Rajah's yacht which had come into our port to bedry-docked. Must have been "seeing life" last night, he added, wrinklinghis nose in an intimate, confidential way which pleased me vastly. ForCaptain Giles had prestige. He was credited with wonderful adventuresand with some mysterious tragedy in his life. And no man had a word tosay against him. He continued:

"I remember him first coming ashore here some years ago. Seems only theother day. He was a nice boy. Oh! these nice boys!"

I could not help laughing aloud. He looked startled, then joined in thelaugh. "No! No! I didn't mean that, " he cried. "What I meant is thatsome of them do go soft mighty quick out here. "

Jocularly I suggested the beastly heat as the first cause. But CaptainGiles disclosed himself possessed of a deeper philosophy. Things outEast were made easy for white men. That was all right. The difficultywas to go on keeping white, and some of these nice boys did not knowhow. He gave me a searching look, and in a benevolent, heavy-unclemanner asked point blank:

"Why did you throw up your berth?"

I became angry all of a sudden; for you can understand how exasperatingsuch a question was to a man who didn't know. I said to myself that Iought to shut up that moralist; and to him aloud I said with challengingpoliteness:

"Why . . . ? Do you disapprove?"

He was too disconcerted to do more than mutter confusedly: "I! . . . Ina general way. . . " and then gave me up. But he retired in good order, under the cover of a heavily humorous remark that he, too, was gettingsoft, and that this was his time for taking his little siesta--when hewas on shore. "Very bad habit. Very bad habit. "

There was a simplicity in the man which would have disarmed a touchinesseven more youthful than mine. So when next day at tiffin he bent hishead toward me and said that he had met my late Captain last evening, adding in an undertone: "He's very sorry you left. He had never had amate that suited him so well, " I answered him earnestly, without anyaffectation, that I certainly hadn't been so comfortable in any ship orwith any commander in all my sea-going days. 

"Well--then, " he murmured. 

"Haven't you heard, Captain Giles, that I intend to go home?"

"Yes, " he said benevolently. "I have heard that sort of thing so oftenbefore. "

"What of that?" I cried. I thought he was the most dull, unimaginativeman I had ever met. I don't know what more I would have said, but themuch-belated Hamilton came in just then and took his usual seat. So Idropped into a mumble. 

"Anyhow, you shall see it done this time. "

Hamilton, beautifully shaved, gave Captain Giles a curt nod, but didn'teven condescend to raise his eyebrows at me; and when he spoke it wasonly to tell the Chief Steward that the food on his plate wasn't fitto be set before a gentleman. The individual addressed seemed much toounhappy to groan. He cast his eyes up to the punkah and that was all. 

Captain Giles and I got up from the table, and the stranger next toHamilton followed our example, manoeuvring himself to his feet withdifficulty. He, poor fellow, not because he was hungry but I verilybelieve only to recover his self-respect, had tried to put some of thatunworthy food into his mouth. But after dropping his fork twice andgenerally making a failure of it, he had sat still with an air ofintense mortification combined with a ghastly glazed stare. Both Gilesand I had avoided looking his way at table. 

On the verandah he stopped short on purpose to address to us anxiouslya long remark which I failed to understand completely. It sounded likesome horrible unknown language. But when Captain Giles, after only aninstant for reflection, assured him with homely friendliness, "Aye, tobe sure. You are right there, " he appeared very much gratified indeed, and went away (pretty straight, too) to seek a distant long chair. 

"What was he trying to say?" I asked with disgust. 

"I don't know. Mustn't be down too much on a fellow. He's feeling prettywretched, you may be sure; and to-morrow he'll feel worse yet. "

Judging by the man's appearance it seemed impossible. I wonderedwhat sort of complicated debauch had reduced him to that unspeakablecondition. Captain Giles' benevolence was spoiled by a curious air ofcomplacency which I disliked. I said with a little laugh:

"Well, he will have you to look after him. " He made a deprecatorygesture, sat down, and took up a paper. I did the same. The paperswere old and uninteresting, filled up mostly with dreary stereotypeddescriptions of Queen Victoria's first jubilee celebrations. Probably weshould have quickly fallen into a tropical afternoon doze if it had notbeen for Hamilton's voice raised in the dining room. He was finishinghis tiffin there. The big double doors stood wide open permanently, andhe could not have had any idea how near to the doorway our chairswere placed. He was heard in a loud, supercilious tone answering somestatement ventured by the Chief Steward. 

"I am not going to be rushed into anything. They will be glad enough toget a gentleman I imagine. There is no hurry. "

A loud whispering from the Steward succeeded and then again Hamilton washeard with even intenser scorn. 

"What? That young ass who fancies himself for having been chief matewith Kent so long? . . . Preposterous. "

Giles and I looked at each other. Kent being the name of my latecommander, Captain Giles' whisper, "He's talking of you, " seemed to mesheer waste of breath. The Chief Steward must have stuck to his point, whatever it was, because Hamilton was heard again more supercilious ifpossible, and also very emphatic:

"Rubbish, my good man! One doesn't _compete_ with a rank outsider likethat. There's plenty of time. "

Then there were pushing of chairs, footsteps in the next room, andplaintive expostulations from the Steward, who was pursuing Hamilton, even out of doors through the main entrance. 

"That's a very insulting sort of man, " remarked CaptainGiles--superfluously, I thought. "Very insulting. You haven't offendedhim in some way, have you?"

"Never spoke to him in my life, " I said grumpily. "Can't imagine whathe means by competing. He has been trying for my job after I left--anddidn't get it. But that isn't exactly competition. "

Captain Giles balanced his big benevolent head thoughtfully. "He didn'tget it, " he repeated very slowly. "No, not likely either, with Kent. Kent is no end sorry you left him. He gives you the name of a goodseaman, too. "

I flung away the paper I was still holding. I sat up, I slapped thetable with my open palm. I wanted to know why he would keep harping onthat, my absolutely private affair. It was exasperating, really. 

Captain Giles silenced me by the perfect equanimity of his gaze. "Nothing to be annoyed about, " he murmured reasonably, with an evidentdesire to soothe the childish irritation he had aroused. And he wasreally a man of an appearance so inoffensive that I tried to explainmyself as much as I could. I told him that I did not want to hearany more about what was past and gone. It had been very nice while itlasted, but now it was done with I preferred not to talk about it oreven think about it. I had made up my mind to go home. 

He listened to the whole tirade in a particular lending-the-earattitude, as if trying to detect a false note in it somewhere; thenstraightened himself up and appeared to ponder sagaciously over thematter. 

"Yes. You told me you meant to go home. Anything in view there?"

Instead of telling him that it was none of his business I said sullenly:

"Nothing that I know of. "

I had indeed considered that rather blank side of the situation I hadcreated for myself by leaving suddenly my very satisfactory employment. And I was not very pleased with it. I had it on the tip of my tongueto say that common sense had nothing to do with my action, and thattherefore it didn't deserve the interest Captain Giles seemed to betaking in it. But he was puffing at a short wooden pipe now, and lookedso guileless, dense, and commonplace, that it seemed hardly worth whileto puzzle him either with truth or sarcasm. 

He blew a cloud of smoke, then surprised me by a very abrupt: "Paid yourpassage money yet?"

Overcome by the shameless pertinacity of a man to whom it was ratherdifficult to be rude, I replied with exaggerated meekness that I hadnot done so yet. I thought there would be plenty of time to do thatto-morrow. 

And I was about to turn away, withdrawing my privacy from his fatuous, objectless attempts to test what sort of stuff it was made of, when helaid down his pipe in an extremely significant manner, you know, as if acritical moment had come, and leaned sideways over the table between us. 

"Oh! You haven't yet!" He dropped his voice mysteriously. "Well, then Ithink you ought to know that there's something going on here. "

I had never in my life felt more detached from all earthly goings on. Freed from the sea for a time, I preserved the sailor's consciousness ofcomplete independence from all land affairs. How could they concernme? I gazed at Captain Giles' animation with scorn rather than withcuriosity. 

To his obviously preparatory question whether our Steward had spoken tome that day I said he hadn't. And what's more he would have had preciouslittle encouragement if he had tried to. I didn't want the fellow tospeak to me at all. 

Unrebuked by my petulance, Captain Giles, with an air of immensesagacity, began to tell me a minute tale about a Harbour Office peon. It was absolutely pointless. A peon was seen walking that morning on theverandah with a letter in his hand. It was in an official envelope. Asthe habit of these fellows is, he had shown it to the first white manhe came across. That man was our friend in the arm-chair. He, as I knew, was not in a state to interest himself in any sublunary matters. Hecould only wave the peon away. The peon then wandered on along theverandah and came upon Captain Giles, who was there by an extraordinarychance. . . . 

At this point he stopped with a profound look. The letter, he continued, was addressed to the Chief Steward. Now what could Captain Ellis, theMaster Attendant, want to write to the Steward for? The fellow wentevery morning, anyhow, to the Harbour Office with his report, for ordersor what not. He hadn't been back more than an hour before there was anoffice peon chasing him with a note. Now what was that for?

And he began to speculate. It was not for this--and it could not be forthat. As to that other thing it was unthinkable. 

The fatuousness of all this made me stare. If the man had not beensomehow a sympathetic personality I would have resented it like aninsult. As it was, I felt only sorry for him. Something remarkablyearnest in his gaze prevented me from laughing in his face. Neither didI yawn at him. I just stared. 

His tone became a shade more mysterious. Directly the fellow (meaningthe Steward) got that note he rushed for his hat and bolted out of thehouse. But it wasn't because the note called him to the Harbour Office. He didn't go there. He was not absent long enough for that. He camedarting back in no time, flung his hat away, and raced about the diningroom moaning and slapping his forehead. All these exciting facts andmanifestations had been observed by Captain Giles. He had, it seems, been meditating upon them ever since. 

I began to pity him profoundly. And in a tone which I tried to makeas little sarcastic as possible I said that I was glad he had foundsomething to occupy his morning hours. 

With his disarming simplicity he made me observe, as if it were a matterof some consequence, how strange it was that he should have spent themorning indoors at all. He generally was out before tiffin, visitingvarious offices, seeing his friends in the harbour, and so on. He hadfelt out of sorts somewhat on rising. Nothing much. Just enough to makehim feel lazy. 

All this with a sustained, holding stare which, in conjunction withthe general inanity of the discourse, conveyed the impression of mild, dreary lunacy. And when he hitched his chair a little and droppedhis voice to the low note of mystery, it flashed upon me that highprofessional reputation was not necessarily a guarantee of sound mind. 

It never occurred to me then that I didn't know in what soundnessof mind exactly consisted and what a delicate and, upon the whole, unimportant matter it was. With some idea of not hurting his feelings Iblinked at him in an interested manner. But when he proceeded to ask memysteriously whether I remembered what had passed just now between thatSteward of ours and "that man Hamilton, " I only grunted sourly assentand turned away my head. 

"Aye. But do you remember every word?" he insisted tactfully. 

"I don't know. It's none of my business, " I snapped out, consigning, moreover, the Steward and Hamilton aloud to eternal perdition. 

I meant to be very energetic and final, but Captain Giles continued togaze at me thoughtfully. Nothing could stop him. He went on to point outthat my personality was involved in that conversation. When I tried topreserve the semblance of unconcern he became positively cruel. I heardwhat the man had said? Yes? What did I think of it then?--he wanted toknow. 

Captain Giles' appearance excluding the suspicion of mere sly malice, I came to the conclusion that he was simply the most tactless idioton earth. I almost despised myself for the weakness of attempting toenlighten his common understanding. I started to explain that I did notthink anything whatever. Hamilton was not worth a thought. What such anoffensive loafer . . . "Aye! that he is, " interjected Captain Giles. . . Thought or said was below any decent man's contempt, and I did notpropose to take the slightest notice of it. 

This attitude seemed to me so simple and obvious that I was reallyastonished at Giles giving no sign of assent. Such perfect stupidity wasalmost interesting. 

"What would you like me to do?" I asked, laughing. "I can't start a rowwith him because of the opinion he has formed of me. Of course, I'veheard of the contemptuous way he alludes to me. But he doesn't intrudehis contempt on my notice. He has never expressed it in my hearing. For even just now he didn't know we could hear him. I should only makemyself ridiculous. "

That hopeless Giles went on puffing at his pipe moodily. All at once hisface cleared, and he spoke. 

"You missed my point. "

"Have I? I am very glad to hear it, " I said. 

With increasing animation he stated again that I had missed his point. Entirely. And in a tone of growing self-conscious complacency he told methat few things escaped his attention, and he was rather used to thinkthem out, and generally from his experience of life and men arrived atthe right conclusion. 

This bit of self-praise, of course, fitted excellently the laboriousinanity of the whole conversation. The whole thing strengthened inme that obscure feeling of life being but a waste of days, which, half-unconsciously, had driven me out of a comfortable berth, away frommen I liked, to flee from the menace of emptiness . . . And to findinanity at the first turn. Here was a man of recognized character andachievement disclosed as an absurd and dreary chatterer. And it wasprobably like this everywhere--from east to west, from the bottom to thetop of the social scale. 

A great discouragement fell on me. A spiritual drowsiness. Giles'voice was going on complacently; the very voice of the universal hollowconceit. And I was no longer angry with it. There was nothing original, nothing new, startling, informing, to expect from the world; noopportunities to find out something about oneself, no wisdom to acquire, no fun to enjoy. Everything was stupid and overrated, even as CaptainGiles was. So be it. 

The name of Hamilton suddenly caught my ear and roused me up. 

"I thought we had done with him, " I said, with the greatest possibledistaste. 

"Yes. But considering what we happened to hear just now I think youought to do it. "

"Ought to do it?" I sat up bewildered. "Do what?"

Captain Giles confronted me very much surprised. 

"Why! Do what I have been advising you to try. You go and ask theSteward what was there in that letter from the Harbour Office. Ask himstraight out. "

I remained speechless for a time. Here was something unexpectedand original enough to be altogether incomprehensible. I murmured, astounded:

"But I thought it was Hamilton that you . . . "

"Exactly. Don't you let him. You do what I tell you. You tackle thatSteward. You'll make him jump, I bet, " insisted Captain Giles, wavinghis smouldering pipe impressively at me. Then he took three rapid puffsat it. 

His aspect of triumphant acuteness was indescribable. Yet the manremained a strangely sympathetic creature. Benevolence radiated fromhim ridiculously, mildly, impressively. It was irritating, too. But Ipointed out coldly, as one who deals with the incomprehensible, that Ididn't see any reason to expose myself to a snub from the fellow. Hewas a very unsatisfactory steward and a miserable wretch besides, but Iwould just as soon think of tweaking his nose. 

"Tweaking his nose, " said Captain Giles in a scandalized tone. "Much useit would be to you. "

That remark was so irrelevant that one could make no answer to it. But the sense of the absurdity was beginning at last to exercise itswell-known fascination. I felt I must not let the man talk to me anymore. I got up, observing curtly that he was too much for me--that Icouldn't make him out. 

Before I had time to move away he spoke again in a changed tone ofobstinacy and puffing nervously at his pipe. 

"Well--he's a--no account cuss--anyhow. You just--ask him. That's all. "

That new manner impressed me--or rather made me pause. But sanityasserting its sway at once I left the verandah after giving him amirthless smile. In a few strides I found myself in the dining room, nowcleared and empty. But during that short time various thoughts occurredto me, such as: that Giles had been making fun of me, expecting someamusement at my expense; that I probably looked silly and gullible; thatI knew very little of life. . . . 

The door facing me across the dining room flew open to my extremesurprise. It was the door inscribed with the word "Steward" and theman himself ran out of his stuffy, Philistinish lair in his absurd, hunted-animal manner, making for the garden door. 

To this day I don't know what made me call after him. "I say! Wait aminute. " Perhaps it was the sidelong glance he gave me; or possibly Iwas yet under the influence of Captain Giles' mysterious earnestness. Well, it was an impulse of some sort; an effect of that force somewherewithin our lives which shapes them this way or that. For if these wordshad not escaped from my lips (my will had nothing to do with that) myexistence would, to be sure, have been still a seaman's existence, butdirected on now to me utterly inconceivable lines. 

No. My will had nothing to do with it. Indeed, no sooner had I made thatfateful noise than I became extremely sorry for it. Had the man stoppedand faced me I would have had to retire in disorder. For I had no notionto carry out Captain Giles' idiotic joke, either at my own expense or atthe expense of the Steward. 

But here the old human instinct of the chase came into play. Hepretended to be deaf, and I, without thinking a second about it, dashedalong my own side of the dining table and cut him off at the very door. 

"Why can't you answer when you are spoken to?" I asked roughly. 

He leaned against the lintel of the door. He looked extremely wretched. Human nature is, I fear, not very nice right through. There are uglyspots in it. I found myself growing angry, and that, I believe, onlybecause my quarry looked so woe-begone. Miserable beggar!

I went for him without more ado. "I understand there was an officialcommunication to the Home from the Harbour Office this morning. Is thatso?"

Instead of telling me to mind my own business, as he might have done, he began to whine with an undertone of impudence. He couldn't see meanywhere this morning. He couldn't be expected to run all over the townafter me. 

"Who wants you to?" I cried. And then my eyes became opened to theinwardness of things and speeches the triviality of which had been sobaffling and tiresome. 

I told him I wanted to know what was in that letter. My sternness oftone and behaviour was only half assumed. Curiosity can be a very fiercesentiment--at times. 

He took refuge in a silly, muttering sulkiness. It was nothing to me, hemumbled. I had told him I was going home. And since I was going home hedidn't see why he should. . . . 

That was the line of his argument, and it was irrelevant enough to bealmost insulting. Insulting to one's intelligence, I mean. 

In that twilight region between youth and maturity, in which I had mybeing then, one is peculiarly sensitive to that kind of insult. I amafraid my behaviour to the Steward became very rough indeed. But itwasn't in him to face out anything or anybody. Drug habit or solitarytippling, perhaps. And when I forgot myself so far as to swear at him hebroke down and began to shriek. 

I don't mean to say that he made a great outcry. It was a cynicalshrieking confession, only faint--piteously faint. It wasn't verycoherent either, but sufficiently so to strike me dumb at first. Iturned my eyes from him in righteous indignation, and perceived CaptainGiles in the verandah doorway surveying quietly the scene, his ownhandiwork, if I may express it in that way. His smouldering black pipewas very noticeable in his big, paternal fist. So, too, was the glitterof his heavy gold watch-chain across the breast of his white tunic. He exhaled an atmosphere of virtuous sagacity serene enough for anyinnocent soul to fly to confidently. I flew to him. 

"You would never believe it, " I cried. "It was a notification that amaster is wanted for some ship. There's a command apparently going aboutand this fellow puts the thing in his pocket. "

The Steward screamed out in accents of loud despair: "You will be thedeath of me!"

The mighty slap he gave his wretched forehead was very loud, too. Butwhen I turned to look at him he was no longer there. He had rushed awaysomewhere out of sight. This sudden disappearance made me laugh. 

This was the end of the incident--for me. Captain Giles, however, staring at the place where the Steward had been, began to haul at hisgorgeous gold chain till at last the watch came up from the deep pocketlike solid truth from a well. Solemnly he lowered it down again and onlythen said:

"Just three o'clock. You will be in time--if you don't lose any, thatis. "

"In time for what?" I asked. 

"Good Lord! For the Harbour Office. This must be looked into. "

Strictly speaking, he was right. But I've never had much taste forinvestigation, for showing people up and all that no doubt ethicallymeritorious kind of work. And my view of the episode was purely ethical. If any one had to be the death of the Steward I didn't see why itshouldn't be Captain Giles himself, a man of age and standing, and apermanent resident. Whereas, I in comparison, felt myself a mere birdof passage in that port. In fact, it might have been said that I hadalready broken off my connection. I muttered that I didn't think--it wasnothing to me. . . . 

"Nothing!" repeated Captain Giles, giving some signs of quiet, deliberate indignation. "Kent warned me you were a peculiar youngfellow. You will tell me next that a command is nothing to you--andafter all the trouble I've taken, too!"

"The trouble!" I murmured, uncomprehending. What trouble? All I couldremember was being mystified and bored by his conversation for a solidhour after tiffin. And he called that taking a lot of trouble. 

He was looking at me with a self-complacency which would have beenodious in any other man. All at once, as if a page of a book had beenturned over disclosing a word which made plain all that had gone before, I perceived that this matter had also another than an ethical aspect. 

And still I did not move. Captain Giles lost his patience a little. Withan angry puff at his pipe he turned his back on my hesitation. 

But it was not hesitation on my part. I had been, if I may expressmyself so, put out of gear mentally. But as soon as I had convincedmyself that this stale, unprofitable world of my discontent containedsuch a thing as a command to be seized, I recovered my powers oflocomotion. 

It's a good step from the Officers' Home to the Harbour Office; but withthe magic word "Command" in my head I found myself suddenly on the quayas if transported there in the twinkling of an eye, before a portal ofdressed white stone above a flight of shallow white steps. 

All this seemed to glide toward me swiftly. The whole great roadsteadto the right was just a mere flicker of blue, and the dim cool hallswallowed me up out of the heat and glare of which I had not been awaretill the very moment I passed in from it. 

The broad inner staircase insinuated itself under my feet somehow. Command is a strong magic. The first human beings I perceived distinctlysince I had parted with the indignant back of Captain Giles were thecrew of the harbour steam-launch lounging on the spacious landing aboutthe curtained archway of the shipping office. 

It was there that my buoyancy abandoned me. The atmosphere ofofficialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of humanendeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy ofpaper and ink. I passed heavily under the curtain which the Malaycoxswain of the harbour launch raised for me. There was nobody in theoffice except the clerks, writing in two industrious rows. But the headShipping-Master hopped down from his elevation and hurried along on thethick mats to meet me in the broad central passage. 

He had a Scottish name, but his complexion was of a rich olive hue, hisshort beard was jet black, and his eyes, also black, had a languishingexpression. He asked confidentially:

"You want to see Him?"

All lightness of spirit and body having departed from me at the touchof officialdom, I looked at the scribe without animation and asked in myturn wearily:

"What do you think? Is it any use?"

"My goodness! He has asked for you twice today. "

This emphatic He was the supreme authority, the Marine Superintendent, the Harbour-Master--a very great person in the eyes of every singlequill-driver in the room. But that was nothing to the opinion he had ofhis own greatness. 

Captain Ellis looked upon himself as a sort of divine (pagan) emanation, the deputy-Neptune for the circumambient seas. If he did not actuallyrule the waves, he pretended to rule the fate of the mortals whose liveswere cast upon the waters. 

This uplifting illusion made him inquisitorial and peremptory. And ashis temperament was choleric there were fellows who were actually afraidof him. He was redoubtable, not in virtue of his office, but because ofhis unwarrantable assumptions. I had never had anything to do with himbefore. 

I said: "Oh! He has asked for me twice. Then perhaps I had better goin. "

"You must! You must!"

The Shipping-Master led the way with a mincing gait around the wholesystem of desks to a tall and important-looking door, which he openedwith a deferential action of the arm. 

He stepped right in (but without letting go of the handle) and, aftergazing reverently down the room for a while, beckoned me in by a silentjerk of the head. Then he slipped out at once and shut the door after memost delicately. 

Three lofty windows gave on the harbour. There was nothing in them butthe dark-blue sparkling sea and the paler luminous blue of the sky. Myeye caught in the depths and distances of these blue tones the whitespeck of some big ship just arrived and about to anchor in the outerroadstead. A ship from home--after perhaps ninety days at sea. There issomething touching about a ship coming in from sea and folding her whitewings for a rest. 

The next thing I saw was the top-knot of silver hair surmounting CaptainEllis' smooth red face, which would have been apoplectic if it hadn'thad such a fresh appearance. 

Our deputy-Neptune had no beard on his chin, and there was no tridentto be seen standing in a corner anywhere, like an umbrella. But hishand was holding a pen--the official pen, far mightier than the sword inmaking or marring the fortune of simple toiling men. He was looking overhis shoulder at my advance. 

When I had come well within range he saluted me by a nerve-shattering:"Where have you been all this time?"

As it was no concern of his I did not take the slightest notice of theshot. I said simply that I had heard there was a master needed for somevessel, and being a sailing-ship man I thought I would apply. . . . 

He interrupted me. "Why! Hang it! _You_ are the right man for that job--ifthere had been twenty others after it. But no fear of that. They are allafraid to catch hold. That's what's the matter. "

He was very irritated. I said innocently: "Are they, sir. I wonder why?"

"Why!" he fumed. "Afraid of the sails. Afraid of a white crew. Too muchtrouble. Too much work. Too long out here. Easy life and deck-chairsmore their mark. Here I sit with the Consul-General's cable before me, and the only man fit for the job not to be found anywhere. I began tothink you were funking it, too. . . . "

"I haven't been long getting to the office, " I remarked calmly. 

"You have a good name out here, though, " he growled savagely withoutlooking at me. 

"I am very glad to hear it from you, sir, " I said. 

"Yes. But you are not on the spot when you are wanted. You know youweren't. That steward of yours wouldn't dare to neglect a message fromthis office. Where the devil did you hide yourself for the best part ofthe day?"

I only smiled kindly down on him, and he seemed to recollect himself, and asked me to take a seat. He explained that the master of a Britishship having died in Bangkok the Consul-General had cabled to him arequest for a competent man to be sent out to take command. 

Apparently, in his mind, I was the man from the first, though for thelooks of the thing the notification addressed to the Sailors' Home wasgeneral. An agreement had already been prepared. He gave it to me toread, and when I handed it back to him with the remark that I acceptedits terms, the deputy-Neptune signed it, stamped it with his own exaltedhand, folded it in four (it was a sheet of blue foolscap) and presentedit to me--a gift of extraordinary potency, for, as I put it in mypocket, my head swam a little. 

"This is your appointment to the command, " he said with a certaingravity. "An official appointment binding the owners to conditions whichyou have accepted. Now--when will you be ready to go?"

I said I would be ready that very day if necessary. He caught me at myword with great alacrity. The steamer Melita was leaving for Bangkokthat evening about seven. He would request her captain officially togive me a passage and wait for me till ten o'clock. 

Then he rose from his office chair, and I got up, too. My head swam, there was no doubt about it, and I felt a certain heaviness of limbs asif they had grown bigger since I had sat down on that chair. I made mybow. 

A subtle change in Captain Ellis' manner became perceptible as thoughhe had laid aside the trident of deputy-Neptune. In reality, it was onlyhis official pen that he had dropped on getting up. 

II

He shook hands with me: "Well, there you are, on your own, appointedofficially under my responsibility. "

He was actually walking with me to the door. What a distance off itseemed! I moved like a man in bonds. But we reached it at last. I openedit with the sensation of dealing with mere dream-stuff, and then at thelast moment the fellowship of seamen asserted itself, stronger thanthe difference of age and station. It asserted itself in Captain Ellis'voice. 

"Good-bye--and good luck to you, " he said so heartily that I could onlygive him a grateful glance. Then I turned and went out, never to see himagain in my life. I had not made three steps into the outer office whenI heard behind my back a gruff, loud, authoritative voice, the voice ofour deputy-Neptune. 

It was addressing the head Shipping-Master who, having let me in, had, apparently, remained hovering in the middle distance ever since. "Mr. R. , let the harbour launch have steam up to take the captain here on boardthe Melita at half-past nine to-night. "

I was amazed at the startled alacrity of R's "Yes, sir. " He ran beforeme out on the landing. My new dignity sat yet so lightly on me thatI was not aware that it was I, the Captain, the object of this lastgraciousness. It seemed as if all of a sudden a pair of wings had grownon my shoulders. I merely skimmed along the polished floor. 

But R. Was impressed. 

"I say!" he exclaimed on the landing, while the Malay crew of thesteam-launch standing by looked stonily at the man for whom they weregoing to be kept on duty so late, away from their gambling, from theirgirls, or their pure domestic joys. "I say! His own launch. What haveyou done to him?"

His stare was full of respectful curiosity. I was quite confounded. 

"Was it for me? I hadn't the slightest notion, " I stammered out. 

He nodded many times. "Yes. And the last person who had it before youwas a Duke. So, there!"

I think he expected me to faint on the spot. But I was in too much of ahurry for emotional displays. My feelings were already in such a whirlthat this staggering information did not seem to make the slightestdifference. It merely fell into the seething cauldron of my brain, andI carried it off with me after a short but effusive passage ofleave-taking with R. 

The favour of the great throws an aureole round the fortunate object ofits selection. That excellent man enquired whether he could do anythingfor me. He had known me only by sight, and he was well aware he wouldnever see me again; I was, in common with the other seamen of the port, merely a subject for official writing, filling up of forms with all theartificial superiority of a man of pen and ink to the men who grapplewith realities outside the consecrated walls of official buildings. Whatghosts we must have been to him! Mere symbols to juggle with in booksand heavy registers, without brains and muscles and perplexities;something hardly useful and decidedly inferior. 

And he--the office hours being over--wanted to know if he could be ofany use to me!

I ought--properly speaking--I ought to have been moved to tears. But Idid not even think of it. It was merely another miraculous manifestationof that day of miracles. I parted from him as if he were a mere symbol. I floated down the staircase. I floated out of the official and imposingportal. I went on floating along. 

I use that word rather than the word "flew, " because I have a distinctimpression that, though uplifted by my aroused youth, my movements weredeliberate enough. To that mixed white, brown, and yellow portion ofmankind, out abroad on their own affairs, I presented the appearanceof a man walking rather sedately. And nothing in the way of abstractioncould have equalled my deep detachment from the forms and colours ofthis world. It was, as it were, final. 

And yet, suddenly, I recognized Hamilton. I recognized him withouteffort, without a shock, without a start. There he was, strolling towardthe Harbour Office with his stiff, arrogant dignity. His red face madehim noticeable at a distance. It flamed, over there, on the shady sideof the street. 

He had perceived me, too. Something (unconscious exuberance of spiritsperhaps) moved me to wave my hand to him elaborately. This lapse fromgood taste happened before I was aware that I was capable of it. 

The impact of my impudence stopped him short, much as a bullet mighthave done. I verily believe he staggered, though as far as I could seehe didn't actually fall. I had gone past in a moment and did not turn myhead. I had forgotten his existence. 

The next ten minutes might have been ten seconds or ten centuries forall my consciousness had to do with it. People might have been fallingdead around me, houses crumbling, guns firing, I wouldn't have known. I was thinking: "By Jove! I have got it. " _It_ being the command. It hadcome about in a way utterly unforeseen in my modest day-dreams. 

I perceived that my imagination had been running in conventionalchannels and that my hopes had always been drab stuff. I had envisaged acommand as a result of a slow course of promotion in the employ of somehighly respectable firm. The reward of faithful service. Well, faithfulservice was all right. One would naturally give that for one's own sake, for the sake of the ship, for the love of the life of one's choice; notfor the sake of the reward. 

There is something distasteful in the notion of a reward. 

And now here I had my command, absolutely in my pocket, in a wayundeniable indeed, but most unexpected; beyond my imaginings, outsideall reasonable expectations, and even notwithstanding the existence ofsome sort of obscure intrigue to keep it away from me. It is true thatthe intrigue was feeble, but it helped the feeling of wonder--as if Ihad been specially destined for that ship I did not know, by some powerhigher than the prosaic agencies of the commercial world. 

A strange sense of exultation began to creep into me. If I had workedfor that command ten years or more there would have been nothing of thekind. I was a little frightened. 

"Let us be calm, " I said to myself. 

Outside the door of the Officers' Home the wretched Steward seemed to bewaiting for me. There was a broad flight of a few steps, and he ranto and fro on the top of it as if chained there. A distressed cur. Helooked as though his throat were too dry for him to bark. 

I regret to say I stopped before going in. There had been a revolutionin my moral nature. He waited open-mouthed, breathless, while I lookedat him for half a minute. 

"And you thought you could keep me out of it, " I said scathingly. 

"You said you were going home, " he squeaked miserably. "You said so. Yousaid so. "

"I wonder what Captain Ellis will have to say to that excuse, " I utteredslowly with a sinister meaning. 

His lower jaw had been trembling all the time and his voice was like thebleating of a sick goat. "You have given me away? You have done for me?"

Neither his distress nor yet the sheer absurdity of it was able todisarm me. It was the first instance of harm being attempted to be doneto me--at any rate, the first I had ever found out. And I was stillyoung enough, still too much on this side of the shadow line, not to besurprised and indignant at such things. 

I gazed at him inflexibly. Let the beggar suffer. He slapped hisforehead and I passed in, pursued, into the dining room, by his screech:"I always said you'd be the death of me. "

This clamour not only overtook me, but went ahead as it were on to theverandah and brought out Captain Giles. 

He stood before me in the doorway in all the commonplace solidity ofhis wisdom. The gold chain glittered on his breast. He clutched asmouldering pipe. 

I extended my hand to him warmly and he seemed surprised, but didrespond heartily enough in the end, with a faint smile of superiorknowledge which cut my thanks short as if with a knife. I don't thinkthat more than one word came out. And even for that one, judging by thetemperature of my face, I had blushed as if for a bad action. Assuming adetached tone, I wondered how on earth he had managed to spot the littleunderhand game that had been going on. 

He murmured complacently that there were but few things done in the townthat he could not see the inside of. And as to this house, he had beenusing it off and on for nearly ten years. Nothing that went on in itcould escape his great experience. It had been no trouble to him. Notrouble at all. 

Then in his quiet, thick tone he wanted to know if I had complainedformally of the Steward's action. 

I said that I hadn't--though, indeed, it was not for want ofopportunity. Captain Ellis had gone for me bald-headed in a mostridiculous fashion for being out of the way when wanted. 

"Funny old gentleman, " interjected Captain Giles. "What did you say tothat?"

"I said simply that I came along the very moment I heard of his message. Nothing more. I didn't want to hurt the Steward. I would scorn to harmsuch an object. No. I made no complaint, but I believe he thinks I'vedone so. Let him think. He's got a fright he won't forget in a hurry, for Captain Ellis would kick him out into the middle of Asia. . . . "

"Wait a moment, " said Captain Giles, leaving me suddenly. I sat downfeeling very tired, mostly in my head. Before I could start a train ofthought he stood again before me, murmuring the excuse that he had to goand put the fellow's mind at ease. 

I looked up with surprise. But in reality I was indifferent. Heexplained that he had found the Steward lying face downward on thehorsehair sofa. He was all right now. 

"He would not have died of fright, " I said contemptuously. 

"No. But he might have taken an overdose out of one of them littlebottles he keeps in his room, " Captain Giles argued seriously. "Theconfounded fool has tried to poison himself once--a few years ago. "

"Really, " I said without emotion. "He doesn't seem very fit to live, anyhow. "

"As to that, it may be said of a good many. "

"Don't exaggerate like this!" I protested, laughing irritably. "But Iwonder what this part of the world would do if you were to leave offlooking after it, Captain Giles? Here you have got me a command andsaved the Steward's life in one afternoon. Though why you should havetaken all that interest in either of us is more than I can understand. "

Captain Giles remained silent for a minute. Then gravely:

"He's not a bad steward really. He can find a good cook, at any rate. And, what's more, he can keep him when found. I remember the cooks wehad here before his time! . . . "

I must have made a movement of impatience, because he interruptedhimself with an apology for keeping me yarning there, while no doubt Ineeded all my time to get ready. 

What I really needed was to be alone for a bit. I seized this openinghastily. My bedroom was a quiet refuge in an apparently uninhabited wingof the building. Having absolutely nothing to do (for I had not unpackedmy things), I sat down on the bed and abandoned myself to the influencesof the hour. To the unexpected influences. . . . 

And first I wondered at my state of mind. Why was I not more surprised?Why? Here I was, invested with a command in the twinkling of an eye, notin the common course of human affairs, but more as if by enchantment. Iought to have been lost in astonishment. But I wasn't. I was very muchlike people in fairy tales. Nothing ever astonishes them. When a fullyappointed gala coach is produced out of a pumpkin to take her to a ball, Cinderella does not exclaim. She gets in quietly and drives away to herhigh fortune. 

Captain Ellis (a fierce sort of fairy) had produced a command out of adrawer almost as unexpectedly as in a fairy tale. But a command is anabstract idea, and it seemed a sort of "lesser marvel" till it flashedupon me that it involved the concrete existence of a ship. 

A ship! My ship! She was mine, more absolutely mine for possessionand care than anything in the world; an object of responsibility anddevotion. She was there waiting for me, spell-bound, unable to move, to live, to get out into the world (till I came), like an enchantedprincess. Her call had come to me as if from the clouds. I had neversuspected her existence. I didn't know how she looked, I had barelyheard her name, and yet we were indissolubly united for a certainportion of our future, to sink or swim together!

A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed through my veins, gave mesuch a sense of the intensity of existence as I have never felt beforeor since. I discovered how much of a seaman I was, in heart, in mind, and, as it were, physically--a man exclusively of sea and ships; the seathe only world that counted, and the ships, the test of manliness, oftemperament, of courage and fidelity--and of love. 

I had an exquisite moment. It was unique also. Jumping up from my seat, I paced up and down my room for a long time. But when I came downstairsI behaved with sufficient composure. I only couldn't eat anything atdinner. 

Having declared my intention not to drive but to walk down to the quay, I must render the wretched Steward justice that he bestirred himselfto find me some coolies for the luggage. They departed, carrying allmy worldly possessions (except a little money I had in my pocket) slungfrom a long pole. Captain Giles volunteered to walk down with me. 

We followed the sombre, shaded alley across the Esplanade. It wasmoderately cool there under the trees. Captain Giles remarked, with asudden laugh: "I know who's jolly thankful at having seen the last ofyou. "

I guessed that he meant the Steward. The fellow had borne himself to mein a sulkily frightened manner at the last. I expressed my wonder thathe should have tried to do me a bad turn for no reason at all. 

"Don't you see that what he wanted was to get rid of our friend Hamiltonby dodging him in front of you for that job? That would have removed himfor good. See?"

"Heavens!" I exclaimed, feeling humiliated somehow. "Can it be possible?What a fool he must be! That overbearing, impudent loafer! Why! Hecouldn't. . . . And yet he's nearly done it, I believe; for the HarbourOffice was bound to send somebody. "

"Aye. A fool like our Steward can be dangerous sometimes, " declaredCaptain Giles sententiously. "Just because he is a fool, " he added, imparting further instruction in his complacent low tones. "For, " hecontinued in the manner of a set demonstration, "no sensible personwould risk being kicked out of the only berth between himself andstarvation just to get rid of a simple annoyance--a small worry. Would he now?"

"Well, no, " I conceded, restraining a desire to laugh at that somethingmysteriously earnest in delivering the conclusions of his wisdom asthough it were the product of prohibited operations. "But that fellowlooks as if he were rather crazy. He must be. "

"As to that, I believe everybody in the world is a little mad, " heannounced quietly. 

"You make no exceptions?" I inquired, just to hear his manner. 

"Why! Kent says that even of you. "

"Does he?" I retorted, extremely embittered all at once against myformer captain. "There's nothing of that in the written character fromhim which I've got in my pocket. Has he given you any instances of mylunacy?"

Captain Giles explained in a conciliating tone that it had been onlya friendly remark in reference to my abrupt leaving the ship for noapparent reason. 

I muttered grumpily: "Oh! leaving his ship, " and mended my pace. Hekept up by my side in the deep gloom of the avenue as if it werehis conscientious duty to see me out of the colony as an undesirablecharacter. He panted a little, which was rather pathetic in a way. ButI was not moved. On the contrary. His discomfort gave me a sort ofmalicious pleasure. 

Presently I relented, slowed down, and said:

"What I really wanted was to get a fresh grip. I felt it was time. Isthat so very mad?"

He made no answer. We were issuing from the avenue. On the bridge overthe canal a dark, irresolute figure seemed to be awaiting something orsomebody. 

It was a Malay policeman, barefooted, in his blue uniform. The silverband on his little round cap shone dimly in the light of the streetlamp. He peered in our direction timidly. 

Before we could come up to him he turned about and walked in front of usin the direction of the jetty. The distance was some hundred yards; andthen I found my coolies squatting on their heels. They had kept the poleon their shoulders, and all my worldly goods, still tied to the pole, were resting on the ground between them. As far as the eye could reachalong the quay there was not another soul abroad except the police peon, who saluted us. 

It seems he had detained the coolies as suspicious characters, and hadforbidden them the jetty. But at a sign from me he took off the embargowith alacrity. The two patient fellows, rising together with a faintgrunt, trotted off along the planks, and I prepared to take my leave ofCaptain Giles, who stood there with an air as though his mission weredrawing to a close. It could not be denied that he had done it all. Andwhile I hesitated about an appropriate sentence he made himself heard:

"I expect you'll have your hands pretty full of tangled-up business. "

I asked him what made him think so; and he answered that it was hisgeneral experience of the world. Ship a long time away from her port, owners inaccessible by cable, and the only man who could explain mattersdead and buried. 

"And you yourself new to the business in a way, " he concluded in a sortof unanswerable tone. 

"Don't insist, " I said. "I know it only too well. I only wish you couldimpart to me some small portion of your experience before I go. As itcan't be done in ten minutes I had better not begin to ask you. There'sthat harbour launch waiting for me, too. But I won't feel really atpeace till I have that ship of mine out in the Indian Ocean. "

He remarked casually that from Bangkok to the Indian Ocean was a prettylong step. And this murmur, like a dim flash from a dark lantern, showedme for a moment the broad belt of islands and reefs between that unknownship, which was mine, and the freedom of the great waters of the globe. 

But I felt no apprehension. I was familiar enough with the Archipelagoby that time. Extreme patience and extreme care would see me through theregion of broken land, of faint airs, and of dead water to where I wouldfeel at last my command swing on the great swell and list over to thegreat breath of regular winds, that would give her the feeling of alarge, more intense life. The road would be long. All roads are longthat lead toward one's heart's desire. But this road my mind's eyecould see on a chart, professionally, with all its complications anddifficulties, yet simple enough in a way. One is a seaman or one is not. And I had no doubt of being one. 

The only part I was a stranger to was the Gulf of Siam. And I mentionedthis to Captain Giles. Not that I was concerned very much. It belongedto the same region the nature of which I knew, into whose very soulI seemed to have looked during the last months of that existence withwhich I had broken now, suddenly, as one parts with some enchantingcompany. 

"The gulf . . . Ay! A funny piece of water--that, " said Captain Giles. 

Funny, in this connection, was a vague word. The whole thing soundedlike an opinion uttered by a cautious person mindful of actions forslander. 

I didn't inquire as to the nature of that funniness. There was really notime. But at the very last he volunteered a warning. 

"Whatever you do keep to the east side of it. The west side is dangerousat this time of the year. Don't let anything tempt you over. You'll findnothing but trouble there. "

Though I could hardly imagine what could tempt me to involve my shipamongst the currents and reefs of the Malay shore, I thanked him for theadvice. 

He gripped my extended arm warmly, and the end of our acquaintance camesuddenly in the words: "Good-night. "

That was all he said: "Good-night. " Nothing more. I don't know what Iintended to say, but surprise made me swallow it, whatever it was. Ichoked slightly, and then exclaimed with a sort of nervous haste: "Oh!Good-night, Captain Giles, good-night. "

His movements were always deliberate, but his back had receded somedistance along the deserted quay before I collected myself enough tofollow his example and made a half turn in the direction of the jetty. 

Only my movements were not deliberate. I hurried down to the steps, andleaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her sternsheetsthe slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl ofher propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguelygleaming brass funnel amidships. 

The misty churning at her stern was the only sound in the world. Theshore lay plunged in the silence of the deeper slumber. I watched thetown recede still and soundless in the hot night, till the abrupt hail, "Steam-launch, ahoy!" made me spin round face forward. We were close toa white ghostly steamer. Lights shone on her decks, in her portholes. And the same voice shouted from her:

"Is that our passenger?"

"It is, " I yelled. 

Her crew had been obviously on the jump. I could hear them runningabout. The modern spirit of haste was loudly vocal in the orders to"Heave away on the cable"--to "Lower the sideladder, " and in urgentrequests to me to "Come along, sir! We have been delayed three hours foryou. . . . Our time is seven o'clock, you know!"

I stepped on the deck. I said "No! I don't know. " The spirit of modernhurry was embodied in a thin, long-armed, long-legged man, with aclosely clipped gray beard. His meagre hand was hot and dry. He declaredfeverishly:

"I am hanged if I would have waited another five minutes Harbour-Masteror no Harbour-Master. "

"That's your own business, " I said. "I didn't ask you to wait for me. "

"I hope you don't expect any supper, " he burst out. "This isn't aboarding-house afloat. You are the first passenger I ever had in my lifeand I hope to goodness you will be the last. "

I made no answer to this hospitable communication; and, indeed, hedidn't wait for any, bolting away on to his bridge to get his ship underway. 

The three days he had me on board he did not depart from thathalf-hostile attitude. His ship having been delayed three hours onmy account he couldn't forgive me for not being a more distinguishedperson. He was not exactly outspoken about it, but that feeling ofannoyed wonder was peeping out perpetually in his talk. 

He was absurd. 

He was also a man of much experience, which he liked to trot out; but nogreater contrast with Captain Giles could have been imagined. He wouldhave amused me if I had wanted to be amused. But I did not want to beamused. I was like a lover looking forward to a meeting. Human hostilitywas nothing to me. I thought of my unknown ship. It was amusementenough, torment enough, occupation enough. 

He perceived my state, for his wits were sufficiently sharp for that, and he poked sly fun at my preoccupation in the manner some nasty, cynical old men assume toward the dreams and illusions of youth. I, onmy side, refrained from questioning him as to the appearance of my ship, though I knew that being in Bangkok every fortnight or so he must haveknown her by sight. I was not going to expose the ship, my ship! to someslighting reference. 

He was the first really unsympathetic man I had ever come in contactwith. My education was far from being finished, though I didn't know it. No! I didn't know it. 

All I knew was that he disliked me and had some contempt for my person. Why? Apparently because his ship had been delayed three hours on myaccount. Who was I to have such a thing done for me? Such a thing hadnever been done for him. It was a sort of jealous indignation. 

My expectation, mingled with fear, was wrought to its highest pitch. Howslow had been the days of the passage and how soon they were over. One morning, early, we crossed the bar, and while the sun wasrising splendidly over the flat spaces of the land we steamed up theinnumerable bends, passed under the shadow of the great gilt pagoda, andreached the outskirts of the town. 

There it was, spread largely on both banks, the Oriental capital whichhad as yet suffered no white conqueror; an expanse of brown houses ofbamboo, of mats, of leaves, of a vegetable-matter style of architecture, sprung out of the brown soil on the banks of the muddy river. It wasamazing to think that in those miles of human habitations there was notprobably half a dozen pounds of nails. Some of those houses of sticksand grass, like the nests of an aquatic race, clung to the low shores. Others seemed to grow out of the water; others again floated in longanchored rows in the very middle of the stream. Here and there in thedistance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered greatpiles of masonry, King's Palace, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated, crumbling under the vertical sunlight, tremendous, overpowering, almostpalpable, which seemed to enter one's breast with the breath of one'snostrils and soak into one's limbs through every pore of one's skin. 

The ridiculous victim of jealousy had for some reason or other to stophis engines just then. The steamer drifted slowly up with the tide. Oblivious of my new surroundings I walked the deck, in anxious, deadenedabstraction, a commingling of romantic reverie with a very practicalsurvey of my qualifications. For the time was approaching for me tobehold my command and to prove my worth in the ultimate test of myprofession. 

Suddenly I heard myself called by that imbecile. He was beckoning me tocome up on his bridge. 

I didn't care very much for that, but as it seemed that he had somethingparticular to say I went up the ladder. 

He laid his hand on my shoulder and gave me a slight turn, pointing withhis other arm at the same time. 

"There! That's your ship, Captain, " he said. 

I felt a thump in my breast--only one, as if my heart had then ceased tobeat. There were ten or more ships moored along the bank, and the one hemeant was partly hidden away from my sight by her next astern. He said:"We'll drift abreast her in a moment. "

What was his tone? Mocking? Threatening? Or only indifferent? I couldnot tell. I suspected some malice in this unexpected manifestation ofinterest. 

He left me, and I leaned over the rail of the bridge looking over theside. I dared not raise my eyes. Yet it had to be done--and, indeed, Icould not have helped myself. I believe I trembled. 

But directly my eyes had rested on my ship all my fear vanished. It wentoff swiftly, like a bad dream. Only that a dream leaves no shame behindit, and that I felt a momentary shame at my unworthy suspicions. 

Yes, there she was. Her hull, her rigging filled my eye with a greatcontent. That feeling of life-emptiness which had made me so restless forthe last few months lost its bitter plausibility, its evil influence, dissolved in a flow of joyous emotion. 

At first glance I saw that she was a high-class vessel, a harmoniouscreature in the lines of her fine body, in the proportioned tallness ofher spars. Whatever her age and her history, she had preserved thestamp of her origin. She was one of those craft that, in virtue of theirdesign and complete finish, will never look old. Amongst her companionsmoored to the bank, and all bigger than herself, she looked like acreature of high breed--an Arab steed in a string of cart-horses. 

A voice behind me said in a nasty equivocal tone: "I hope you aresatisfied with her, Captain. " I did not even turn my head. It was themaster of the steamer, and whatever he meant, whatever he thought ofher, I knew that, like some rare women, she was one of those creatureswhose mere existence is enough to awaken an unselfish delight. One feelsthat it is good to be in the world in which she has her being. 

That illusion of life and character which charms one in men's finesthandiwork radiated from her. An enormous bulk of teak-wood timber swungover her hatchway; lifeless matter, looking heavier and bigger thananything aboard of her. When they started lowering it the surge of thetackle sent a quiver through her from water-line to the trucks up thefine nerves of her rigging, as though she had shuddered at the weight. It seemed cruel to load her so. . . . 

Half an hour later, putting my foot on her deck for the first time, Ireceived the feeling of deep physical satisfaction. Nothing could equalthe fullness of that moment, the ideal completeness of that emotionalexperience which had come to me without the preliminary toil anddisenchantments of an obscure career. 

My rapid glance ran over her, enveloped, appropriated the formconcreting the abstract sentiment of my command. A lot of detailsperceptible to a seaman struck my eye, vividly in that instant. For therest, I saw her disengaged from the material conditions of her being. The shore to which she was moored was as if it did not exist. What wereto me all the countries of the globe? In all the parts of the worldwashed by navigable waters our relation to each other would be thesame--and more intimate than there are words to express in the language. Apart from that, every scene and episode would be a mere passing show. The very gang of yellow coolies busy about the main hatch was lesssubstantial than the stuff dreams are made of. For who on earth woulddream of Chinamen? . . . 

I went aft, ascended the poop, where, under the awning, gleamed thebrasses of the yacht-like fittings, the polished surfaces of the rails, the glass of the skylights. Right aft two seamen, busy cleaning thesteering gear, with the reflected ripples of light running playfullyup their bent backs, went on with their work, unaware of me and ofthe almost affectionate glance I threw at them in passing toward thecompanion-way of the cabin. 

The doors stood wide open, the slide was pushed right back. Thehalf-turn of the staircase cut off the view of the lobby. A lowhumming ascended from below, but it stopped abruptly at the sound of mydescending footsteps. 

III

The first thing I saw down there was the upper part of a man's bodyprojecting backward, as it were, from one of the doors at the foot ofthe stairs. His eyes looked at me very wide and still. In one hand heheld a dinner plate, in the other a cloth. 

"I am your new Captain, " I said quietly. 

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, he had got rid of the plate andthe cloth and jumped to open the cabin door. As soon as I passed intothe saloon he vanished, but only to reappear instantly, buttoning up ajacket he had put on with the swiftness of a "quick-change" artist. 

"Where's the chief mate?" I asked. 

"In the hold, I think, sir. I saw him go down the after-hatch tenminutes ago. "

"Tell him I am on board. "

The mahogany table under the skylight shone in the twilight like a darkpool of water. The sideboard, surmounted by a wide looking-glass in anormulu frame, had a marble top. It bore a pair of silver-plated lampsand some other pieces--obviously a harbour display. The saloon itself waspanelled in two kinds of wood in the excellent simple taste prevailingwhen the ship was built. 

I sat down in the armchair at the head of the table--the captain'schair, with a small tell-tale compass swung above it--a mute reminder ofunremitting vigilance. 

A succession of men had sat in that chair. I became aware of thatthought suddenly, vividly, as though each had left a little of himselfbetween the four walls of these ornate bulkheads; as if a sort ofcomposite soul, the soul of command, had whispered suddenly to mine oflong days at sea and of anxious moments. 

"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall taste of that peace andthat unrest in a searching intimacy with your own self--obscure as wewere and as supreme in the face of all the winds and all the seas, in animmensity that receives no impress, preserves no memories, and keeps noreckoning of lives. "

Deep within the tarnished ormulu frame, in the hot half-light siftedthrough the awning, I saw my own face propped between my hands. And Istared back at myself with the perfect detachment of distance, ratherwith curiosity than with any other feeling, except of some sympathy forthis latest representative of what for all intents and purposes was adynasty, continuous not in blood indeed, but in its experience, in itstraining, in its conception of duty, and in the blessed simplicity ofits traditional point of view on life. 

It struck me that this quietly staring man whom I was watching, both asif he were myself and somebody else, was not exactly a lonely figure. He had his place in a line of men whom he did not know, of whom he hadnever heard; but who were fashioned by the same influences, whose soulsin relation to their humble life's work had no secrets for him. 

Suddenly I perceived that there was another man in the saloon, standinga little on one side and looking intently at me. The chief mate. Hislong, red moustache determined the character of his physiognomy, whichstruck me as pugnacious in (strange to say) a ghastly sort of way. 

How long had he been there looking at me, appraising me in my unguardedday-dreaming state? I would have been more disconcerted if, having theclock set in the top of the mirror-frame right in front of me, I had notnoticed that its long hand had hardly moved at all. 

I could not have been in that cabin more than two minutes altogether. Say three. . . . So he could not have been watching me more than a merefraction of a minute, luckily. Still, I regretted the occurrence. 

But I showed nothing of it as I rose leisurely (it had to be leisurely)and greeted him with perfect friendliness. 

There was something reluctant and at the same time attentive in hisbearing. His name was Burns. We left the cabin and went round the shiptogether. His face in the full light of day appeared very pale, meagre, even haggard. Somehow I had a delicacy as to looking too often at him;his eyes, on the contrary, remained fairly glued on my face. They weregreenish and had an expectant expression. 

He answered all my questions readily enough, but my ear seemed to catcha tone of unwillingness. The second officer, with three or four hands, was busy forward. The mate mentioned his name and I nodded to him inpassing. He was very young. He struck me as rather a cub. 

When we returned below, I sat down on one end of a deep, semi-circular, or, rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extendedright across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sitdown, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kepthis eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as ifall this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into alaugh, slap him on the back, and vanish from the cabin. 

There was an odd stress in the situation which began to make meuncomfortable. I tried to react against this vague feeling. 

"It's only my inexperience, " I thought. 

In the face of that man, several years, I judged, older than myself, Ibecame aware of what I had left already behind me--my youth. And thatwas indeed poor comfort. Youth is a fine thing, a mighty power--aslong as one does not think of it. I felt I was becoming self-conscious. Almost against my will I assumed a moody gravity. I said: "I see youhave kept her in very good order, Mr. Burns. "

Directly I had uttered these words I asked myself angrily why the deucedid I want to say that? Mr. Burns in answer had only blinked at me. Whaton earth did he mean?

I fell back on a question which had been in my thoughts for a longtime--the most natural question on the lips of any seaman whateverjoining a ship. I voiced it (confound this self-consciousness) in adegaged cheerful tone: "I suppose she can travel--what?"

Now a question like this might have been answered normally, either inaccents of apologetic sorrow or with a visibly suppressed pride, in a"I don't want to boast, but you shall see, " sort of tone. There aresailors, too, who would have been roughly outspoken: "Lazy brute, " oropenly delighted: "She's a flyer. " Two ways, if four manners. 

But Mr. Burns found another way, a way of his own which had, at allevents, the merit of saving his breath, if no other. 

Again he did not say anything. He only frowned. And it was an angryfrown. I waited. Nothing more came. 

"What's the matter? . . . Can't you tell after being nearly two years inthe ship?" I addressed him sharply. 

He looked as startled for a moment as though he had discovered mypresence only that very moment. But this passed off almost at once. Heput on an air of indifference. But I suppose he thought it better to saysomething. He said that a ship needed, just like a man, the chance toshow the best she could do, and that this ship had never had a chancesince he had been on board of her. Not that he could remember. The lastcaptain. . . . He paused. 

"Has he been so very unlucky?" I asked with frank incredulity. Mr. Burnsturned his eyes away from me. No, the late captain was not an unluckyman. One couldn't say that. But he had not seemed to want to make use ofhis luck. 

Mr. Burns--man of enigmatic moods--made this statement with an inanimateface and staring wilfully at the rudder casing. The statement itself wasobscurely suggestive. I asked quietly:

"Where did he die?"

"In this saloon. Just where you are sitting now, " answered Mr. Burns. 

I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon the whole I wasrelieved to hear that he had not died in the bed which was now to bemine. I pointed out to the chief mate that what I really wanted to knowwas where he had buried his late captain. 

Mr. Burns said that it was at the entrance to the gulf. A roomy grave; asufficient answer. But the mate, overcoming visibly something withinhim--something like a curious reluctance to believe in my advent (as anirrevocable fact, at any rate), did not stop at that--though, indeed, hemay have wished to do so. 

As a compromise with his feelings, I believe, he addressed himselfpersistently to the rudder-casing, so that to me he had the appearanceof a man talking in solitude, a little unconsciously, however. 

His tale was that at seven bells in the forenoon watch he had all handsmustered on the quarterdeck and told them they had better go down to saygood-bye to the captain. 

Those words, as if grudged to an intruding personage, were enough forme to evoke vividly that strange ceremony: The bare-footed, bare-headedseamen crowding shyly into that cabin, a small mob pressed against thatsideboard, uncomfortable rather than moved, shirts open on sunburntchests, weather-beaten faces, and all staring at the dying man with thesame grave and expectant expression. 

"Was he conscious?" I asked. 

"He didn't speak, but he moved his eyes to look at them, " said the mate. 

After waiting a moment, Mr. Burns motioned the crew to leave the cabin, but he detained the two eldest men to stay with the captain while hewent on deck with his sextant to "take the sun. " It was getting towardnoon and he was anxious to obtain a good observation for latitude. Whenhe returned below to put his sextant away he found that the two men hadretreated out into the lobby. Through the open door he had a view of thecaptain lying easy against the pillows. He had "passed away" while Mr. Burns was taking this observation. As near noon as possible. He hadhardly changed his position. 

Mr. Burns sighed, glanced at me inquisitively, as much as to say, "Aren't you going yet?" and then turned his thoughts from his newcaptain back to the old, who, being dead, had no authority, was not inanybody's way, and was much easier to deal with. 

Mr. Burns dealt with him at some length. He was a peculiar man--ofsixty-five about--iron gray, hard-faced, obstinate, and uncommunicative. He used to keep the ship loafing at sea for inscrutable reasons. Wouldcome on deck at night sometimes, take some sail off her, God only knowswhy or wherefore, then go below, shut himself up in his cabin, and playon the violin for hours--till daybreak perhaps. In fact, he spent mostof his time day or night playing the violin. That was when the fit tookhim. Very loud, too. 

It came to this, that Mr. Burns mustered his courage one day andremonstrated earnestly with the captain. Neither he nor the second matecould get a wink of sleep in their watches below for the noise. . . . And how could they be expected to keep awake while on duty? He pleaded. The answer of that stern man was that if he and the second mate didn'tlike the noise, they were welcome to pack up their traps and walk overthe side. When this alternative was offered the ship happened to be 600miles from the nearest land. 

Mr. Burns at this point looked at me with an air of curiosity. I beganto think that my predecessor was a remarkably peculiar old man. 

But I had to hear stranger things yet. It came out that this stern, grim, wind-tanned, rough, sea-salted, taciturn sailor of sixty-five wasnot only an artist, but a lover as well. In Haiphong, when they gotthere after a course of most unprofitable peregrinations (during whichthe ship was nearly lost twice), he got himself, in Mr. Burns' ownwords, "mixed up" with some woman. Mr. Burns had had no personalknowledge of that affair, but positive evidence of it existed in theshape of a photograph taken in Haiphong. Mr. Burns found it in one ofthe drawers in the captain's room. 

In due course I, too, saw that amazing human document (I even threw itoverboard later). There he sat, with his hands reposing on his knees, bald, squat, gray, bristly, recalling a wild boar somehow; and by hisside towered an awful mature, white female with rapacious nostrils and acheaply ill-omened stare in her enormous eyes. She was disguised in somesemi-oriental, vulgar, fancy costume. She resembled a low-class mediumor one of those women who tell fortunes by cards for half a crown. Andyet she was striking. A professional sorceress from the slums. It wasincomprehensible. There was something awful in the thought that she wasthe last reflection of the world of passion for the fierce soul whichseemed to look at one out of the sardonically savage face of thatold seaman. However, I noticed that she was holding some musicalinstrument--guitar or mandoline--in her hand. Perhaps that was the secretof her sortilege. 

For Mr. Burns that photograph explained why the unloaded ship had keptsweltering at anchor for three weeks in a pestilential hot harbourwithout air. They lay there and gasped. The captain, appearing now andthen on short visits, mumbled to Mr. Burns unlikely tales about someletters he was waiting for. 

Suddenly, after vanishing for a week, he came on board in the middleof the night and took the ship out to sea with the first break of dawn. Daylight showed him looking wild and ill. The mere getting clear of theland took two days, and somehow or other they bumped slightly on areef. However, no leak developed, and the captain, growling "no matter, "informed Mr. Burns that he had made up his mind to take the ship toHong-Kong and drydock her there. 

At this Mr. Burns was plunged into despair. For indeed, to beat upto Hong-Kong against a fierce monsoon, with a ship not sufficientlyballasted and with her supply of water not completed, was an insaneproject. 

But the captain growled peremptorily, "Stick her at it, " and Mr. Burns, dismayed and enraged, stuck her at it, and kept her at it, blowing awaysails, straining the spars, exhausting the crew--nearly maddened by theabsolute conviction that the attempt was impossible and was bound to endin some catastrophe. 

Meantime the captain, shut up in his cabin and wedged in a corner of hissettee against the crazy bounding of the ship, played the violin--or, atany rate, made continuous noise on it. 

When he appeared on deck he would not speak and not always answer whenspoken to. It was obvious that he was ill in some mysterious manner, andbeginning to break up. 

As the days went by the sounds of the violin became less and less loud, till at last only a feeble scratching would meet Mr. Burns' ear ashe stood in the saloon listening outside the door of the captain'sstate-room. 

One afternoon in perfect desperation he burst into that room and madesuch a scene, tearing his hair and shouting such horrid imprecationsthat he cowed the contemptuous spirit of the sick man. The water-tankswere low, they had not gained fifty miles in a fortnight. She wouldnever reach Hong-Kong. 

It was like fighting desperately toward destruction for the ship and themen. This was evident without argument. Mr. Burns, losing all restraint, put his face close to his captain's and fairly yelled: "You, sir, aregoing out of the world. But I can't wait till you are dead before I putthe helm up. You must do it yourself. You must do it now!"

The man on the couch snarled in contempt. "So I am going out of theworld--am I?"

"Yes, sir--you haven't many days left in it, " said Mr. Burns calmingdown. "One can see it by your face. "

"My face, eh? . . . Well, put up the helm and be damned to you. "

Burns flew on deck, got the ship before the wind, then came down againcomposed, but resolute. 

"I've shaped a course for Pulo Condor, sir, " he said. "When we make it, if you are still with us, you'll tell me into what port you wish me totake the ship and I'll do it. "

The old man gave him a look of savage spite, and said those atrociouswords in deadly, slow tones. 

"If I had my wish, neither the ship nor any of you would ever reach aport. And I hope you won't. "

Mr. Burns was profoundly shocked. I believe he was positively frightenedat the time. It seems, however, that he managed to produce such aneffective laugh that it was the old man's turn to be frightened. Heshrank within himself and turned his back on him. 

"And his head was not gone then, " Mr. Burns assured me excitedly. "Hemeant every word of it. "

"Such was practically the late captain's last speech. No connectedsentence passed his lips afterward. That night he used the last of hisstrength to throw his fiddle over the side. No one had actually seenhim in the act, but after his death Mr. Burns couldn't find the thinganywhere. The empty case was very much in evidence, but the fiddlewas clearly not in the ship. And where else could it have gone to butoverboard?"

"Threw his violin overboard!" I exclaimed. 

"He did, " cried Mr. Burns excitedly. "And it's my belief he would havetried to take the ship down with him if it had been in human power. Henever meant her to see home again. He wouldn't write to his owners, henever wrote to his old wife, either--he wasn't going to. He had made uphis mind to cut adrift from everything. That's what it was. He didn'tcare for business, or freights, or for making a passage--or anything. Hemeant to have gone wandering about the world till he lost her with allhands. "

Mr. Burns looked like a man who had escaped great danger. For a littlehe would have exclaimed: "If it hadn't been for me!" And the transparentinnocence of his indignant eyes was underlined quaintly by the arrogantpair of moustaches which he proceeded to twist, and as if extend, horizontally. 

I might have smiled if I had not been busy with my own sensations, which were not those of Mr. Burns. I was already the man in command. Mysensations could not be like those of any other man on board. In thatcommunity I stood, like a king in his country, in a class all by myself. I mean an hereditary king, not a mere elected head of a state. I wasbrought there to rule by an agency as remote from the people and asinscrutable almost to them as the Grace of God. 

And like a member of a dynasty, feeling a semimystical bond with thedead, I was profoundly shocked by my immediate predecessor. 

That man had been in all essentials but his age just such another manas myself. Yet the end of his life was a complete act of treason, thebetrayal of a tradition which seemed to me as imperative as any guideon earth could be. It appeared that even at sea a man could become thevictim of evil spirits. I felt on my face the breath of unknown powersthat shape our destinies. 

Not to let the silence last too long I asked Mr. Burns if he had writtento his captain's wife. He shook his head. He had written to nobody. 

In a moment he became sombre. He never thought of writing. It took himall his time to watch incessantly the loading of the ship by a rascallyChinese stevedore. In this Mr. Burns gave me the first glimpse of thereal chief mate's soul which dwelt uneasily in his body. 

He mused, then hastened on with gloomy force. 

"Yes! The captain died as near noon as possible. I looked through hispapers in the afternoon. I read the service over him at sunset andthen I stuck the ship's head north and brought her in here. I--brought--her--in. "

He struck the table with his fist. 

"She would hardly have come in by herself, " I observed. "But why didn'tyou make for Singapore instead?"

His eyes wavered. "The nearest port, " he muttered sullenly. 

I had framed the question in perfect innocence, but his answer (thedifference in distance was insignificant) and his manner offered me aclue to the simple truth. He took the ship to a port where he expectedto be confirmed in his temporary command from lack of a qualified masterto put over his head. Whereas Singapore, he surmised justly, wouldbe full of qualified men. But his naive reasoning forgot to take intoaccount the telegraph cable reposing on the bottom of the very Gulf upwhich he had turned that ship which he imagined himself to have savedfrom destruction. Hence the bitter flavour of our interview. I tasted itmore and more distinctly--and it was less and less to my taste. 

"Look here, Mr. Burns, " I began very firmly. "You may as well understandthat I did not run after this command. It was pushed in my way. I'veaccepted it. I am here to take the ship home first of all, and you maybe sure that I shall see to it that every one of you on board here doeshis duty to that end. This is all I have to say--for the present. "

He was on his feet by this time, but instead of taking his dismissalhe remained with trembling, indignant lips, and looking at me hard asthough, really, after this, there was nothing for me to do in commondecency but to vanish from his outraged sight. Like all very simpleemotional states this was moving. I felt sorry for him--almostsympathetic, till (seeing that I did not vanish) he spoke in a tone offorced restraint. 

"If I hadn't a wife and a child at home you may be sure, sir, I wouldhave asked you to let me go the very minute you came on board. "

I answered him with a matter-of-course calmness as though some remotethird person were in question. 

"And I, Mr. Burns, would not have let you go. You have signed the ship'sarticles as chief officer, and till they are terminated at the finalport of discharge I shall expect you to attend to your duty and give methe benefit of your experience to the best of your ability. "

Stony incredulity lingered in his eyes: but it broke down before myfriendly attitude. With a slight upward toss of his arms (I got to knowthat gesture well afterward) he bolted out of the cabin. 

We might have saved ourselves that little passage of harmless sparring. Before many days had elapsed it was Mr. Burns who was pleading with meanxiously not to leave him behind; while I could only return him butdoubtful answers. The whole thing took on a somewhat tragic complexion. 

And this horrible problem was only an extraneous episode, a merecomplication in the general problem of how to get that ship--which wasmine with her appurtenances and her men, with her body and her spiritnow slumbering in that pestilential river--how to get her out to sea. 

Mr. Burns, while still acting captain, had hastened to sign acharter-party which in an ideal world without guile would have beenan excellent document. Directly I ran my eye over it I foresaw troubleahead unless the people of the other part were quite exceptionallyfair-minded and open to argument. 

Mr. Burns, to whom I imparted my fears, chose to take great umbrageat them. He looked at me with that usual incredulous stare, and saidbitterly:

"I suppose, sir, you want to make out I've acted like a fool?"

I told him, with my systematic kindliness which always seemed to augmenthis surprise, that I did not want to make out anything. I would leavethat to the future. 

And, sure enough, the future brought in a lot of trouble. There weredays when I used to remember Captain Giles with nothing short ofabhorrence. His confounded acuteness had let me in for this job; whilehis prophecy that I "would have my hands full" coming true, made itappear as if done on purpose to play an evil joke on my young innocence. 

Yes. I had my hands full of complications which were most valuableas "experience. " People have a great opinion of the advantages ofexperience. But in this connection experience means always somethingdisagreeable as opposed to the charm and innocence of illusions. 

I must say I was losing mine rapidly. But on these instructivecomplications I must not enlarge more than to say that they could all beresumed in the one word: Delay. 

A mankind which has invented the proverb, "Time is money, " willunderstand my vexation. The word "Delay" entered the secret chamber ofmy brain, resounded there like a tolling bell which maddens the ear, affected all my senses, took on a black colouring, a bitter taste, adeadly meaning. 

"I am really sorry to see you worried like this. Indeed, I am. . . . "

It was the only humane speech I used to hear at that time. And it camefrom a doctor, appropriately enough. 

A doctor is humane by definition. But that man was so in reality. Hisspeech was not professional. I was not ill. But other people were, andthat was the reason of his visiting the ship. 

He was the doctor of our Legation and, of course, of the Consulate, too. He looked after the ship's health, which generally was poor, andtrembling, as it were, on the verge of a break-up. Yes. The men ailed. And thus time was not only money, but life as well. 

I had never seen such a steady ship's company. As the doctor remarked tome: "You seem to have a most respectable lot of seamen. " Not only werethey consistently sober, but they did not even want to go ashore. Carewas taken to expose them as little as possible to the sun. Theywere employed on light work under the awnings. And the humane doctorcommended me. 

"Your arrangements appear to me to be very judicious, my dear Captain. "

It is difficult to express how much that pronouncement comforted me. The doctor's round, full face framed in a light-coloured whisker was theperfection of a dignified amenity. He was the only human being inthe world who seemed to take the slightest interest in me. He wouldgenerally sit in the cabin for half an hour or so at every visit. 

I said to him one day:

"I suppose the only thing now is to take care of them as you are doingtill I can get the ship to sea?"

He inclined his head, shutting his eyes under the large spectacles, andmurmured:

"The sea . . . Undoubtedly. "

The first member of the crew fairly knocked over was the steward--thefirst man to whom I had spoken on board. He was taken ashore (withcholeric symptoms) and died there at the end of a week. Then, while Iwas still under the startling impression of this first home-thrust ofthe climate, Mr. Burns gave up and went to bed in a raging fever withoutsaying a word to anybody. 

I believe he had partly fretted himself into that illness; the climatedid the rest with the swiftness of an invisible monster ambushed inthe air, in the water, in the mud of the river-bank. Mr. Burns was apredestined victim. 

I discovered him lying on his back, glaring sullenly and radiating heaton one like a small furnace. He would hardly answer my questions, andonly grumbled. Couldn't a man take an afternoon off duty with a badheadache--for once?

That evening, as I sat in the saloon after dinner, I could hear himmuttering continuously in his room. Ransome, who was clearing the table, said to me:

"I am afraid, sir, I won't be able to give the mate all the attentionhe's likely to need. I will have to be forward in the galley a greatpart of my time. "

Ransome was the cook. The mate had pointed him out to me the first day, standing on the deck, his arms crossed on his broad chest, gazing on theriver. 

Even at a distance his well-proportioned figure, something thoroughlysailor-like in his poise, made him noticeable. On nearer view theintelligent, quiet eyes, a well-bred face, the disciplined independenceof his manner made up an attractive personality. When, in addition, Mr. Burns told me that he was the best seaman in the ship, I expressed mysurprise that in his earliest prime and of such appearance he shouldsign on as cook on board a ship. 

"It's his heart, " Mr. Burns had said. "There's something wrong with it. He mustn't exert himself too much or he may drop dead suddenly. "

And he was the only one the climate had not touched--perhaps because, carrying a deadly enemy in his breast, he had schooled himself into asystematic control of feelings and movements. When one was in the secretthis was apparent in his manner. After the poor steward died, and as hecould not be replaced by a white man in this Oriental port, Ransome hadvolunteered to do the double work. 

"I can do it all right, sir, as long as I go about it quietly, " he hadassured me. 

But obviously he couldn't be expected to take up sick-nursing inaddition. Moreover, the doctor peremptorily ordered Mr. Burns ashore. 

With a seaman on each side holding him up under the arms, the mate wentover the gangway more sullen than ever. We built him up with pillows inthe gharry, and he made an effort to say brokenly:

"Now--you've got--what you wanted--got me out of--the ship. "

"You were never more mistaken in your life, Mr. Burns, " I said quietly, duly smiling at him; and the trap drove off to a sort of sanatorium, apavilion of bricks which the doctor had in the grounds of his residence. 

I visited Mr. Burns regularly. After the first few days, when he didn'tknow anybody, he received me as if I had come either to gloat overan enemy or else to curry favour with a deeply wronged person. It waseither one or the other, just as it happened according to his fantasticsickroom moods. Whichever it was, he managed to convey it to me evenduring the period when he appeared almost too weak to talk. I treatedhim to my invariable kindliness. 

Then one day, suddenly, a surge of downright panic burst through allthis craziness. 

If I left him behind in this deadly place he would die. He felt it, hewas certain of it. But I wouldn't have the heart to leave him ashore. Hehad a wife and child in Sydney. 

He produced his wasted forearms from under the sheet which covered himand clasped his fleshless claws. He would die! He would die here. . . . 

He absolutely managed to sit up, but only for a moment, and when he fellback I really thought that he would die there and then. I called to theBengali dispenser, and hastened away from the room. 

Next day he upset me thoroughly by renewing his entreaties. I returnedan evasive answer, and left him the picture of ghastly despair. The dayafter I went in with reluctance, and he attacked me at once in amuch stronger voice and with an abundance of argument which was quitestartling. He presented his case with a sort of crazy vigour, and askedme finally how would I like to have a man's death on my conscience? Hewanted me to promise that I would not sail without him. 

I said that I really must consult the doctor first. He cried out atthat. The doctor! Never! That would be a death sentence. 

The effort had exhausted him. He closed his eyes, but went on ramblingin a low voice. I had hated him from the start. The late captain hadhated him, too. Had wished him dead. Had wished all hands dead. . . . 

"What do you want to stand in with that wicked corpse for, sir? He'llhave you, too, " he ended, blinking his glazed eyes vacantly. 

"Mr. Burns, " I cried, very much discomposed, "what on earth are youtalking about?"

He seemed to come to himself, though he was too weak to start. 

"I don't know, " he said languidly. "But don't ask that doctor, sir. Youand I are sailors. Don't ask him, sir. Some day perhaps you will have awife and child yourself. "

And again he pleaded for the promise that I would not leave him behind. I had the firmness of mind not to give it to him. Afterward thissternness seemed criminal; for my mind was made up. That prostrated man, with hardly strength enough to breathe and ravaged by a passion of fear, was irresistible. And, besides, he had happened to hit on the rightwords. He and I were sailors. That was a claim, for I had no otherfamily. As to the wife and child (some day) argument, it had no force. It sounded merely bizarre. 

I could imagine no claim that would be stronger and more absorbingthan the claim of that ship, of these men snared in the river by sillycommercial complications, as if in some poisonous trap. 

However, I had nearly fought my way out. Out to sea. The sea--which waspure, safe, and friendly. Three days more. 

That thought sustained and carried me on my way back to the ship. In thesaloon the doctor's voice greeted me, and his large form followedhis voice, issuing out of the starboard spare cabin where the ship'smedicine chest was kept securely lashed in the bed-place. 

Finding that I was not on board he had gone in there, he said, toinspect the supply of drugs, bandages, and so on. Everything wascompleted and in order. 

I thanked him; I had just been thinking of asking him to do that verything, as in a couple of days, as he knew, we were going to sea, whereall our troubles of every sort would be over at last. 

He listened gravely and made no answer. But when I opened to him my mindas to Mr. Burns he sat down by my side, and, laying his hand on my kneeamicably, begged me to think what it was I was exposing myself to. 

The man was just strong enough to bear being moved and no more. But hecouldn't stand a return of the fever. I had before me a passage of sixtydays perhaps, beginning with intricate navigation and ending probablywith a lot of bad weather. Could I run the risk of having to go throughit single-handed, with no chief officer and with a second quite a youth?. . . 

He might have added that it was my first command, too. He did probablythink of that fact, for he checked himself. It was very present to mymind. 

He advised me earnestly to cable to Singapore for a chief officer, evenif I had to delay my sailing for a week. 

"Never, " I said. The very thought gave me the shivers. The hands seemedfairly fit, all of them, and this was the time to get them away. Once atsea I was not afraid of facing anything. The sea was now the only remedyfor all my troubles. 

The doctor's glasses were directed at me like two lamps searching thegenuineness of my resolution. He opened his lips as if to argue further, but shut them again without saying anything. I had a vision so vivid ofpoor Burns in his exhaustion, helplessness, and anguish, that it movedme more than the reality I had come away from only an hour before. Itwas purged from the drawbacks of his personality, and I could not resistit. 

"Look here, " I said. "Unless you tell me officially that the manmust not be moved I'll make arrangements to have him brought on boardtomorrow, and shall take the ship out of the river next morning, even ifI have to anchor outside the bar for a couple of days to get her readyfor sea. "

"Oh! I'll make all the arrangements myself, " said the doctor at once. "I spoke as I did only as a friend--as a well-wisher, and that sort ofthing. "

He rose in his dignified simplicity and gave me a warm handshake, rathersolemnly, I thought. But he was as good as his word. When Mr. Burnsappeared at the gangway carried on a stretcher, the doctor himselfwalked by its side. The programme had been altered in so far that thistransportation had been left to the last moment, on the very morning ofour departure. 

It was barely an hour after sunrise. The doctor waved his big arm to mefrom the shore and walked back at once to his trap, which had followedhim empty to the river-side. Mr. Burns, carried across the quarter-deck, had the appearance of being absolutely lifeless. Ransome went down tosettle him in his cabin. I had to remain on deck to look after the ship, for the tug had got hold of our towrope already. 

The splash of our shore-fasts falling in the water produced a completechange of feeling in me. It was like the imperfect relief of awakeningfrom a nightmare. But when the ship's head swung down the river awayfrom that town, Oriental and squalid, I missed the expected elation ofthat striven-for moment. What there was, undoubtedly, was a relaxationof tension which translated itself into a sense of weariness after aninglorious fight. 

About midday we anchored a mile outside the bar. The afternoon was busyfor all hands. Watching the work from the poop, where I remained all thetime, I detected in it some of the languor of the six weeks spent in thesteaming heat of the river. The first breeze would blow that away. Nowthe calm was complete. I judged that the second officer--a callow youthwith an unpromising face--was not, to put it mildly, of that invaluablestuff from which a commander's right hand is made. But I was glad tocatch along the main deck a few smiles on those seamen's faces at whichI had hardly had time to have a good look as yet. Having thrown off themortal coil of shore affairs, I felt myself familiar with them and yet alittle strange, like a long-lost wanderer among his kin. 

Ransome flitted continually to and fro between the galley and the cabin. It was a pleasure to look at him. The man positively had grace. Healone of all the crew had not had a day's illness in port. But withthe knowledge of that uneasy heart within his breast I could detect therestraint he put on the natural sailor-like agility of his movements. Itwas as though he had something very fragile or very explosive to carryabout his person and was all the time aware of it. 

I had occasion to address him once or twice. He answered me in hispleasant, quiet voice and with a faint, slightly wistful smile. Mr. Burns appeared to be resting. He seemed fairly comfortable. 

After sunset I came out on deck again to meet only a still void. Thethin, featureless crust of the coast could not be distinguished. Thedarkness had risen around the ship like a mysterious emanation from thedumb and lonely waters. I leaned on the rail and turned my ear to theshadows of the night. Not a sound. My command might have been a planetflying vertiginously on its appointed path in a space of infinitesilence. I clung to the rail as if my sense of balance were leaving mefor good. How absurd. I failed nervously. 

"On deck there!"

The immediate answer, "Yes, sir, " broke the spell. The anchor-watchman ran up the poop ladder smartly. I told him to report at once theslightest sign of a breeze coming. 

Going below I looked in on Mr. Burns. In fact, I could not avoid seeinghim, for his door stood open. The man was so wasted that, in this whitecabin, under a white sheet, and with his diminished head sunk in thewhite pillow, his red moustaches captured their eyes exclusively, likesomething artificial--a pair of moustaches from a shop exhibited therein the harsh light of the bulkhead-lamp without a shade. 

While I stared with a sort of wonder he asserted himself by opening hiseyes and even moving them in my direction. A minute stir. 

"Dead calm, Mr. Burns, " I said resignedly. 

In an unexpectedly distinct voice Mr. Burns began a rambling speech. Itstone was very strange, not as if affected by his illness, but as if ofa different nature. It sounded unearthly. As to the matter, I seemedto make out that it was the fault of the "old man"--the latecaptain--ambushed down there under the sea with some evil intention. Itwas a weird story. 

I listened to the end; then stepping into the cabin I laid my hand onthe mate's forehead. It was cool. He was light-headed only from extremeweakness. Suddenly he seemed to become aware of me, and in his ownvoice--of course, very feeble--he asked regretfully:

"Is there no chance at all to get under way, sir?"

"What's the good of letting go our hold of the ground only to drift, Mr. Burns?" I answered. 

He sighed and I left him to his immobility. His hold on life wasas slender as his hold on sanity. I was oppressed by my lonelyresponsibilities. I went into my cabin to seek relief in a few hours'sleep, but almost before I closed my eyes the man on deck came downreporting a light breeze. Enough to get under way with, he said. 

And it was no more than just enough. I ordered the windlass manned, thesails loosed, and the topsails set. But by the time I had cast the shipI could hardly feel any breath of wind. Nevertheless, I trimmed theyards and put everything on her. I was not going to give up the attempt. 

PART TWO

IV

With her anchor at the bow and clothed in canvas to her very trucks, mycommand seemed to stand as motionless as a model ship set on the gleamsand shadows of polished marble. It was impossible to distinguish landfrom water in the enigmatical tranquillity of the immense forces of theworld. A sudden impatience possessed me. 

"Won't she answer the helm at all?" I said irritably to the man whosestrong brown hands grasping the spokes of the wheel stood out lighted onthe darkness; like a symbol of mankind's claim to the direction of itsown fate. 

He answered me. 

"Yes, sir. She's coming-to slowly. "

"Let her head come up to south. "

"Aye, aye, sir. "

I paced the poop. There was not a sound but that of my footsteps, tillthe man spoke again. 

"She is at south now, sir. "

I felt a slight tightness of the chest before I gave out the firstcourse of my first command to the silent night, heavy with dew andsparkling with stars. There was a finality in the act committing me tothe endless vigilance of my lonely task. 

"Steady her head at that, " I said at last. "The course is south. "

"South, sir, " echoed the man. 

I sent below the second mate and his watch and remained in charge, walking the deck through the chill, somnolent hours that precede thedawn. 

Slight puffs came and went, and whenever they were strong enough to wakeup the black water the murmur alongside ran through my very heart ina delicate crescendo of delight and died away swiftly. I was bitterlytired. The very stars seemed weary of waiting for daybreak. It came atlast with a mother-of-pearl sheen at the zenith, such as I had neverseen before in the tropics, unglowing, almost gray, with a strangereminder of high latitudes. 

The voice of the look-out man hailed from forward:

"Land on the port bow, sir. "

"All right. "

Leaning on the rail I never even raised my eyes. 

The motion of the ship was imperceptible. Presently Ransome brought methe cup of morning coffee. After I had drunk it I looked ahead, andin the still streak of very bright pale orange light I saw the landprofiled flatly as if cut out of black paper and seeming to float onthe water as light as cork. But the rising sun turned it into mere darkvapour, a doubtful, massive shadow trembling in the hot glare. 

The watch finished washing decks. I went below and stopped at Mr. Burns'door (he could not bear to have it shut), but hesitated to speak to himtill he moved his eyes. I gave him the news. 

"Sighted Cape Liant at daylight. About fifteen miles. "

He moved his lips then, but I heard no sound till I put my ear down, andcaught the peevish comment: "This is crawling. . . . No luck. "

"Better luck than standing still, anyhow, " I pointed out resignedly, andleft him to whatever thoughts or fancies haunted his awful immobility. 

Later that morning, when relieved by my second officer, I threw myselfon my couch and for some three hours or so I really found oblivion. Itwas so perfect that on waking up I wondered where I was. Then came theimmense relief of the thought: on board my ship! At sea! At sea!

Through the port-holes I beheld an unruffled, sun-smitten horizon. Thehorizon of a windless day. But its spaciousness alone was enough to giveme a sense of a fortunate escape, a momentary exultation of freedom. 

I stepped out into the saloon with my heart lighter than it had been fordays. Ransome was at the sideboard preparing to lay the table for thefirst sea dinner of the passage. He turned his head, and something inhis eyes checked my modest elation. 

Instinctively I asked: "What is it now?" not expecting in the least theanswer I got. It was given with that sort of contained serenity whichwas characteristic of the man. 

"I am afraid we haven't left all sickness behind us, sir. "

"We haven't! What's the matter?"

He told me then that two of our men had been taken bad with fever inthe night. One of them was burning and the other was shivering, but hethought that it was pretty much the same thing. I thought so, too. Ifelt shocked by the news. "One burning, the other shivering, you say?No. We haven't left the sickness behind. Do they look very ill?"

"Middling bad, sir. " Ransome's eyes gazed steadily into mine. Weexchanged smiles. Ransome's a little wistful, as usual, mine no doubtgrim enough, to correspond with my secret exasperation. 

I asked:

"Was there any wind at all this morning?"

"Can hardly say that, sir. We've moved all the time though. The landahead seems a little nearer. "

That was it. A little nearer. Whereas if we had only had a little morewind, only a very little more, we might, we should, have been abreastof Liant by this time and increasing our distance from that contaminatedshore. And it was not only the distance. It seemed to me that a strongerbreeze would have blown away the contamination which clung to the ship. It obviously did cling to the ship. Two men. One burning, one shivering. I felt a distinct reluctance to go and look at them. What was the good?Poison is poison. Tropical fever is tropical fever. But that itshould have stretched its claw after us over the sea seemed to me anextraordinary and unfair license. I could hardly believe that it couldbe anything worse than the last desperate pluck of the evil from whichwe were escaping into the clean breath of the sea. If only that breathhad been a little stronger. However, there was the quinine against thefever. I went into the spare cabin where the medicine chest was kept toprepare two doses. I opened it full of faith as a man opens a miraculousshrine. The upper part was inhabited by a collection of bottles, allsquare-shouldered and as like each other as peas. Under that orderlyarray there were two drawers, stuffed as full of things as one couldimagine--paper packages, bandages, cardboard boxes officially labelled. The lower of the two, in one of its compartments, contained ourprovision of quinine. 

There were five bottles, all round and all of a size. One was abouta third full. The other four remained still wrapped up in paper andsealed. But I did not expect to see an envelope lying on top of them. Asquare envelope, belonging, in fact, to the ship's stationery. 

It lay so that I could see it was not closed down, and on picking itup and turning it over I perceived that it was addressed to myself. Itcontained a half-sheet of notepaper, which I unfolded with a queer senseof dealing with the uncanny, but without any excitement as people meetand do extraordinary things in a dream. 

"My dear Captain, " it began, but I ran to the signature. The writer wasthe doctor. The date was that of the day on which, returning from myvisit to Mr. Burns in the hospital, I had found the excellent doctorwaiting for me in the cabin; and when he told me that he had beenputting in time inspecting the medicine chest for me. How bizarre! Whileexpecting me to come in at any moment he had been amusing himself bywriting me a letter, and then as I came in had hastened to stuff it intothe medicine-chest drawer. A rather incredible proceeding. I turned tothe text in wonder. 

In a large, hurried, but legible hand the good, sympathetic man for somereason, either of kindness or more likely impelled by the irresistibledesire to express his opinion, with which he didn't want to damp myhopes before, was warning me not to put my trust in the beneficialeffects of a change from land to sea. "I didn't want to add to yourworries by discouraging your hopes, " he wrote. "I am afraid that, medically speaking, the end of your troubles is not yet. " In short, he expected me to have to fight a probable return of tropical illness. Fortunately I had a good provision of quinine. I should put my trust inthat, and administer it steadily, when the ship's health would certainlyimprove. 

I crumpled up the letter and rammed it into my pocket. Ransome carriedoff two big doses to the men forward. As to myself, I did not go on deckas yet. I went instead to the door of Mr. Burns' room, and gave him thatnews, too. 

It was impossible to say the effect it had on him. At first I thoughtthat he was speechless. His head lay sunk in the pillow. He moved hislips enough, however, to assure me that he was getting much stronger; astatement shockingly untrue on the face of it. 

That afternoon I took my watch as a matter of course. A greatover-heated stillness enveloped the ship and seemed to hold hermotionless in a flaming ambience composed in two shades of blue. Faint, hot puffs eddied nervelessly from her sails. And yet she moved. She musthave. For, as the sun was setting, we had drawn abreast of Cape Liantand dropped it behind us: an ominous retreating shadow in the lastgleams of twilight. 

In the evening, under the crude glare of his lamp, Mr. Burns seemed tohave come more to the surface of his bedding. It was as if adepressing hand had been lifted off him. He answered my few words by acomparatively long, connected speech. He asserted himself strongly. If he escaped being smothered by this stagnant heat, he said, he wasconfident that in a very few days he would be able to come up on deckand help me. 

While he was speaking I trembled lest this effort of energy should leavehim lifeless before my eyes. But I cannot deny that there was somethingcomforting in his willingness. I made a suitable reply, but pointed outto him that the only thing that could really help us was wind--a fairwind. 

He rolled his head impatiently on the pillow. And it was not comfortingin the least to hear him begin to mutter crazily about the late captain, that old man buried in latitude 8 d 20', right in our way--ambushed atthe entrance of the Gulf. 

"Are you still thinking of your late captain, Mr. Burns?" I said. "Iimagine the dead feel no animosity against the living. They care nothingfor them. "

"You don't know that one, " he breathed out feebly. 

"No. I didn't know him, and he didn't know me. And so he can't have anygrievance against me, anyway. "

"Yes. But there's all the rest of us on board, " he insisted. 

I felt the inexpugnable strength of common sense being insidiouslymenaced by this gruesome, by this insane, delusion. And I said:

"You mustn't talk so much. You will tire yourself. "

"And there is the ship herself, " he persisted in a whisper. 

"Now, not a word more, " I said, stepping in and laying my hand on hiscool forehead. It proved to me that this atrocious absurdity was rootedin the man himself and not in the disease, which, apparently, hademptied him of every power, mental and physical, except that one fixedidea. 

I avoided giving Mr. Burns any opening for conversation for the next fewdays. I merely used to throw him a hasty, cheery word when passing hisdoor. I believe that if he had had the strength he would have called outafter me more than once. But he hadn't the strength. Ransome, however, observed to me one afternoon that the mate "seemed to be picking upwonderfully. "

"Did he talk any nonsense to you of late?" I asked casually. 

"No, sir. " Ransome was startled by the direct question; but, after apause, he added equably: "He told me this morning, sir, that he wassorry he had to bury our late captain right in the ship's way, as onemay say, out of the Gulf. "

"Isn't this nonsense enough for you?" I asked, looking confidently atthe intelligent, quiet face on which the secret uneasiness in the man'sbreast had thrown a transparent veil of care. 

Ransome didn't know. He had not given a thought to the matter. And witha faint smile he flitted away from me on his never-ending duties, withhis usual guarded activity. 

Two more days passed. We had advanced a little way--a very littleway--into the larger space of the Gulf of Siam. Seizing eagerly uponthe elation of the first command thrown into my lap, by the agency ofCaptain Giles, I had yet an uneasy feeling that such luck as this hasgot perhaps to be paid for in some way. I had held, professionally, a review of my chances. I was competent enough for that. At least, Ithought so. I had a general sense of my preparedness which only a manpursuing a calling he loves can know. That feeling seemed to me the mostnatural thing in the world. As natural as breathing. I imagined I couldnot have lived without it. 

I don't know what I expected. Perhaps nothing else than thatspecial intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthfulaspirations. Whatever I expected I did not expect to be beset byhurricanes. I knew better than that. In the Gulf of Siam there are nohurricanes. But neither did I expect to find myself bound hand and footto the hopeless extent which was revealed to me as the days went on. 

Not that the evil spell held us always motionless. Mysterious currentsdrifted us here and there, with a stealthy power made manifest only bythe changing vistas of the islands fringing the east shore of the Gulf. And there were winds, too, fitful and deceitful. They raised hopes onlyto dash them into the bitterest disappointment, promises of advanceending in lost ground, expiring in sighs, dying into dumb stillness inwhich the currents had it all their own way--their own inimical way. 

The island of Koh-ring, a great, black, upheaved ridge amongst a lot oftiny islets, lying upon the glassy water like a triton amongst minnows, seemed to be the centre of the fatal circle. It seemed impossible to getaway from it. Day after day it remained in sight. More than once, ina favourable breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbingtwilight, thinking that it was for the last time. Vain hope. A night offitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the risingsun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ring looking more barren, inhospitable, and grim than ever. 

"It's like being bewitched, upon my word, " I said once to Mr. Burns, from my usual position in the doorway. 

He was sitting up in his bed-place. He was progressing toward the worldof living men; if he could hardly have been said to have rejoined ityet. He nodded to me his frail and bony head in a wisely mysteriousassent. 

"Oh, yes, I know what you mean, " I said. "But you cannot expect meto believe that a dead man has the power to put out of joint themeteorology of this part of the world. Though indeed it seems to havegone utterly wrong. The land and sea breezes have got broken up intosmall pieces. We cannot depend upon them for five minutes together. "

"It won't be very long now before I can come up on deck, " muttered Mr. Burns, "and then we shall see. "

Whether he meant this for a promise to grapple with supernatural evil Icouldn't tell. At any rate, it wasn't the kind of assistance I needed. On the other hand, I had been living on deck practically night and dayso as to take advantage of every chance to get my ship a little more tothe southward. The mate, I could see, was extremely weak yet, and notquite rid of his delusion, which to me appeared but a symptom of hisdisease. At all events, the hopefulness of an invalid was not to bediscouraged. I said:

"You will be most welcome there, I am sure, Mr. Burns. If you go onimproving at this rate you'll be presently one of the healthiest men inthe ship. "

This pleased him, but his extreme emaciation converted hisself-satisfied smile into a ghastly exhibition of long teeth under thered moustache. 

"Aren't the fellows improving, sir?" he asked soberly, with an extremelysensible expression of anxiety on his face. 

I answered him only with a vague gesture and went away from the door. The fact was that disease played with us capriciously very much as thewinds did. It would go from one man to another with a lighter or heaviertouch, which always left its mark behind, staggering some, knockingothers over for a time, leaving this one, returning to another, so thatall of them had now an invalidish aspect and a hunted, apprehensive lookin their eyes; while Ransome and I, the only two completely untouched, went amongst them assiduously distributing quinine. It was a doublefight. The adverse weather held us in front and the disease pressed onour rear. I must say that the men were very good. The constant toil oftrimming yards they faced willingly. But all spring was out of theirlimbs, and as I looked at them from the poop I could not keep from mymind the dreadful impression that they were moving in poisoned air. 

Down below, in his cabin, Mr. Burns had advanced so far as not only tobe able to sit up, but even to draw up his legs. Clasping them with bonyarms, like an animated skeleton, he emitted deep, impatient sighs. 

"The great thing to do, sir, " he would tell me on every occasion, when Igave him the chance, "the great thing is to get the ship past 8 d 20' oflatitude. Once she's past that we're all right. "

At first I used only to smile at him, though, God knows, I had not muchheart left for smiles. But at last I lost my patience. 

"Oh, yes. The latitude 8 d 20'. That's where you buried your latecaptain, isn't it?" Then with severity: "Don't you think, Mr. Burns, it's about time you dropped all that nonsense?"

He rolled at me his deep-sunken eyes in a glance of invincibleobstinacy. But for the rest he only muttered, just loud enough for meto hear, something about "Not surprised . . . Find . . . Play us somebeastly trick yet. . . . "

Such passages as this were not exactly wholesome for my resolution. Thestress of adversity was beginning to tell on me. At the same time, Ifelt a contempt for that obscure weakness of my soul. I said to myselfdisdainfully that it should take much more than that to affect in thesmallest degree my fortitude. 

I didn't know then how soon and from what unexpected direction it wouldbe attacked. 

It was the very next day. The sun had risen clear of the southernshoulder of Koh-ring, which still hung, like an evil attendant, on ourport quarter. It was intensely hateful to my sight. During the nightwe had been heading all round the compass, trimming the yards again andagain, to what I fear must have been for the most part imaginary puffsof air. Then just about sunrise we got for an hour an inexplicable, steady breeze, right in our teeth. There was no sense in it. It fittedneither with the season of the year nor with the secular experienceof seamen as recorded in books, nor with the aspect of the sky. Onlypurposeful malevolence could account for it. It sent us travelling ata great pace away from our proper course; and if we had been out onpleasure sailing bent it would have been a delightful breeze, with theawakened sparkle of the sea, with the sense of motion and a feeling ofunwonted freshness. Then, all at once, as if disdaining to carry fartherthe sorry jest, it dropped and died out completely in less than fiveminutes. The ship's head swung where it listed; the stilled sea took onthe polish of a steel plate in the calm. 

I went below, not because I meant to take some rest, but simply becauseI couldn't bear to look at it just then. The indefatigable Ransome wasbusy in the saloon. It had become a regular practice with him to giveme an informal health report in the morning. He turned away from thesideboard with his usual pleasant, quiet gaze. No shadow rested on hisintelligent forehead. 

"There are a good many of them middling bad this morning, sir, " he saidin a calm tone. 

"What? All knocked out?"

"Only two actually in their bunks, sir, but--"

"It's the last night that has done for them. We have had to pull andhaul all the blessed time. "

"I heard, sir. I had a mind to come out and help only, you know. . . . "

"Certainly not. You mustn't. . . . The fellows lie at night about thedecks, too. It isn't good for them. "

Ransome assented. But men couldn't be looked after like children. Moreover, one could hardly blame them for trying for such coolness andsuch air as there was to be found on deck. He himself, of course, knewbetter. 

He was, indeed, a reasonable man. Yet it would have been hard to saythat the others were not. The last few days had been for us like theordeal of the fiery furnace. One really couldn't quarrel with theircommon, imprudent humanity making the best of the moments of relief, when the night brought in the illusion of coolness and the starlighttwinkled through the heavy, dew-laden air. Moreover, most of them wereso weakened that hardly anything could be done without everybody thatcould totter mustering on the braces. No, it was no use remonstratingwith them. But I fully believed that quinine was of very great useindeed. 

I believed in it. I pinned my faith to it. It would save the men, theship, break the spell by its medicinal virtue, make time of no account, the weather but a passing worry and, like a magic powder working againstmysterious malefices, secure the first passage of my first commandagainst the evil powers of calms and pestilence. I looked upon it asmore precious than gold, and unlike gold, of which there ever hardlyseems to be enough anywhere, the ship had a sufficient store of it. Iwent in to get it with the purpose of weighing out doses. I stretched myhand with the feeling of a man reaching for an unfailing panacea, tookup a fresh bottle and unrolled the wrapper, noticing as I did so thatthe ends, both top and bottom, had come unsealed. . . . 

But why record all the swift steps of the appalling discovery? You haveguessed the truth already. There was the wrapper, the bottle, and thewhite powder inside, some sort of powder! But it wasn't quinine. Onelook at it was quite enough. I remember that at the very moment ofpicking up the bottle, before I even dealt with the wrapper, the weightof the object I had in my hand gave me an instant premonition. Quinineis as light as feathers; and my nerves must have been exasperated intoan extraordinary sensibility. I let the bottle smash itself on thefloor. The stuff, whatever it was, felt gritty under the sole of myshoe. I snatched up the next bottle and then the next. The weight alonetold the tale. One after another they fell, breaking at my feet, notbecause I threw them down in my dismay, but slipping through my fingersas if this disclosure were too much for my strength. 

It is a fact that the very greatness of a mental shock helps one to bearup against it by producing a sort of temporary insensibility. I came outof the state-room stunned, as if something heavy had dropped on my head. From the other side of the saloon, across the table, Ransome, with aduster in his hand, stared open-mouthed. I don't think that I lookedwild. It is quite possible that I appeared to be in a hurry becauseI was instinctively hastening up on deck. An example this of trainingbecome instinct. The difficulties, the dangers, the problems of a shipat sea must be met on deck. 

To this fact, as it were of nature, I responded instinctively; whichmay be taken as a proof that for a moment I must have been robbed of myreason. 

I was certainly off my balance, a prey to impulse, for at the bottom ofthe stairs I turned and flung myself at the doorway of Mr. Burns' cabin. The wildness of his aspect checked my mental disorder. He was sitting upin his bunk, his body looking immensely long, his head drooping a littlesideways, with affected complacency. He flourished, in his tremblinghand, on the end of a forearm no thicker than a walking-stick, a shiningpair of scissors which he tried before my very eyes to jab at histhroat. 

I was to a certain extent horrified; but it was rather a secondary sortof effect, not really strong enough to make me yell at him in some suchmanner as: "Stop!" . . . "Heavens!" . . . "What are you doing?"

In reality he was simply overtaxing his returning strength in a shakyattempt to clip off the thick growth of his red beard. A large towel wasspread over his lap, and a shower of stiff hairs, like bits of copperwire, was descending on it at every snip of the scissors. 

He turned to me his face grotesque beyond the fantasies of mad dreams, one cheek all bushy as if with a swollen flame, the other denuded andsunken, with the untouched long moustache on that side asserting itself, lonely and fierce. And while he stared thunderstruck, with the gapingscissors on his fingers, I shouted my discovery at him fiendishly, insix words, without comment. 

V

I heard the clatter of the scissors escaping from his hand, noted theperilous heave of his whole person over the edge of the bunk after them, and then, returning to my first purpose, pursued my course on the deck. The sparkle of the sea filled my eyes. It was gorgeous and barren, monotonous and without hope under the empty curve of the sky. The sailshung motionless and slack, the very folds of their sagging surfacesmoved no more than carved granite. The impetuosity of my advent made theman at the helm start slightly. A block aloft squeaked incomprehensibly, for what on earth could have made it do so? It was a whistling note likea bird's. For a long, long time I faced an empty world, steeped in aninfinity of silence, through which the sunshine poured and flowed forsome mysterious purpose. Then I heard Ransome's voice at my elbow. 

"I have put Mr. Burns back to bed, sir. "

"You have. "

"Well, sir, he got out, all of a sudden, but when he let go the edge ofhis bunk he fell down. He isn't light-headed, though, it seems to me. "

"No, " I said dully, without looking at Ransome. He waited for a moment, then cautiously, as if not to give offence: "I don't think we need losemuch of that stuff, sir, " he said, "I can sweep it up, every bit ofit almost, and then we could sift the glass out. I will go about it atonce. It will not make the breakfast late, not ten minutes. "

"Oh, yes, " I said bitterly. "Let the breakfast wait, sweep up every bitof it, and then throw the damned lot overboard!"

The profound silence returned, and when I looked over my shoulder, Ransome--the intelligent, serene Ransome--had vanished from my side. The intense loneliness of the sea acted like poison on my brain. When Iturned my eyes to the ship, I had a morbid vision of her as a floatinggrave. Who hasn't heard of ships found floating, haphazard, with theircrews all dead? I looked at the seaman at the helm, I had an impulse tospeak to him, and, indeed, his face took on an expectant cast as if hehad guessed my intention. But in the end I went below, thinking Iwould be alone with the greatness of my trouble for a little while. But through his open door Mr. Burns saw me come down, and addressed megrumpily: "Well, sir?"

I went in. "It isn't well at all, " I said. 

Mr. Burns, reestablished in his bed-place, was concealing his hirsutecheek in the palm of his hand. 

"That confounded fellow has taken away the scissors from me, " were thenext words he said. 

The tension I was suffering from was so great that it was perhaps justas well that Mr. Burns had started on his grievance. He seemed very soreabout it and grumbled, "Does he think I am mad, or what?"

"I don't think so, Mr. Burns, " I said. I looked upon him at that momentas a model of self-possession. I even conceived on that account a sort ofadmiration for that man, who had (apart from the intense materiality ofwhat was left of his beard) come as near to being a disembodied spiritas any man can do and live. I noticed the preternatural sharpness of theridge of his nose, the deep cavities of his temples, and I envied him. He was so reduced that he would probably die very soon. Enviable man!So near extinction--while I had to bear within me a tumult of sufferingvitality, doubt, confusion, self-reproach, and an indefinite reluctanceto meet the horrid logic of the situation. I could not help muttering:"I feel as if I were going mad myself. "

Mr. Burns glared spectrally, but otherwise was wonderfully composed. 

"I always thought he would play us some deadly trick, " he said, with apeculiar emphasis on the _he_. 

It gave me a mental shock, but I had neither the mind, nor the heart, nor the spirit to argue with him. My form of sickness was indifference. The creeping paralysis of a hopeless outlook. So I only gazed at him. Mr. Burns broke into further speech. 

"Eh! What! No! You won't believe it? Well, how do you account for this?How do you think it could have happened?"

"Happened?" I repeated dully. "Why, yes, how in the name of the infernalpowers did this thing happen?"

Indeed, on thinking it out, it seemed incomprehensible that it shouldjust be like this: the bottles emptied, refilled, rewrapped, andreplaced. A sort of plot, a sinister attempt to deceive, a thingresembling sly vengeance, but for what? Or else a fiendish joke. But Mr. Burns was in possession of a theory. It was simple, and he uttered itsolemnly in a hollow voice. 

"I suppose they have given him about fifteen pounds in Haiphong for thatlittle lot. "

"Mr. Burns!" I cried. 

He nodded grotesquely over his raised legs, like two broomsticks in thepyjamas, with enormous bare feet at the end. 

"Why not? The stuff is pretty expensive in this part of the world, andthey were very short of it in Tonkin. And what did he care? You havenot known him. I have, and I have defied him. He feared neither God, nordevil, nor man, nor wind, nor sea, nor his own conscience. And I believehe hated everybody and everything. But I think he was afraid to die. Ibelieve I am the only man who ever stood up to him. I faced him in thatcabin where you live now, when he was sick, and I cowed him then. Hethought I was going to twist his neck for him. If he had had his way wewould have been beating up against the Nord-East monsoon, as long as helived and afterward, too, for ages and ages. Acting the Flying Dutchmanin the China Sea! Ha! Ha!"

"But why should he replace the bottles like this?" . . . I began. 

"Why shouldn't he? Why should he want to throw the bottles away? Theyfit the drawer. They belong to the medicine chest. "

"And they were wrapped up, " I cried. 

"Well, the wrappers were there. Did it from habit, I suppose, and asto refilling, there is always a lot of stuff they send in paper parcelsthat burst after a time. And then, who can tell? I suppose you didn'ttaste it, sir? But, of course, you are sure. . . . "

"No, " I said. "I didn't taste it. It is all overboard now. "

Behind me, a soft, cultivated voice said: "I have tasted it. It seemed amixture of all sorts, sweetish, saltish, very horrible. "

Ransome, stepping out of the pantry, had been listening for some time, as it was very excusable in him to do. 

"A dirty trick, " said Mr. Burns. "I always said he would. "

The magnitude of my indignation was unbounded. And the kind, sympatheticdoctor, too. The only sympathetic man I ever knew . . . Instead ofwriting that warning letter, the very refinement of sympathy, why didn'tthe man make a proper inspection? But, as a matter of fact, it washardly fair to blame the doctor. The fittings were in order and themedicine chest is an officially arranged affair. There was nothingreally to arouse the slightest suspicion. The person I could neverforgive was myself. Nothing should ever be taken for granted. The seedof everlasting remorse was sown in my breast. 

"I feel it's all my fault, " I exclaimed, "mine and nobody else's. That'show I feel. I shall never forgive myself. "

"That's very foolish, sir, " said Mr. Burns fiercely. 

And after this effort he fell back exhausted on his bed. He closed hiseyes, he panted; this affair, this abominable surprise had shaken himup, too. As I turned away I perceived Ransome looking at me blankly. Heappreciated what it meant, but managed to produce his pleasant, wistfulsmile. Then he stepped back into his pantry, and I rushed up on deckagain to see whether there was any wind, any breath under the sky, anystir of the air, any sign of hope. The deadly stillness met me again. Nothing was changed except that there was a different man at the wheel. He looked ill. His whole figure drooped, and he seemed rather to clingto the spokes than hold them with a controlling grip. I said to him:

"You are not fit to be here. "

"I can manage, sir, " he said feebly. 

As a matter of fact, there was nothing for him to do. The ship had nosteerage way. She lay with her head to the westward, the everlastingKoh-ring visible over the stern, with a few small islets, black spotsin the great blaze, swimming before my troubled eyes. And but for thosebits of land there was no speck on the sky, no speck on the water, no shape of vapour, no wisp of smoke, no sail, no boat, no stir ofhumanity, no sign of life, nothing!

The first question was, what to do? What could one do? The first thingto do obviously was to tell the men. I did it that very day. I wasn'tgoing to let the knowledge simply get about. I would face them. Theywere assembled on the quarterdeck for the purpose. Just before I steppedout to speak to them I discovered that life could hold terrible moments. No confessed criminal had ever been so oppressed by his sense ofguilt. This is why, perhaps, my face was set hard and my voice curt andunemotional while I made my declaration that I could do nothing morefor the sick in the way of drugs. As to such care as could be given themthey knew they had had it. 

I would have held them justified in tearing me limb from limb. Thesilence which followed upon my words was almost harder to bear than theangriest uproar. I was crushed by the infinite depth of its reproach. But, as a matter of fact, I was mistaken. In a voice which I hadgreat difficulty in keeping firm, I went on: "I suppose, men, you haveunderstood what I said, and you know what it means. "

A voice or two were heard: "Yes, sir. . . . We understand. "

They had kept silent simply because they thought that they were notcalled to say anything; and when I told them that I intended to run intoSingapore and that the best chance for the ship and the men was in theefforts all of us, sick and well, must make to get her along out ofthis, I received the encouragement of a low assenting murmur and ofa louder voice exclaiming: "Surely there is a way out of this blamedhole. "

*****

Here is an extract from the notes I wrote at the time. 

"We have lost Koh-ring at last. For many days now I don't think I havebeen two hours below altogether. I remain on deck, of course, night andday, and the nights and the days wheel over us in succession, whetherlong or short, who can say? All sense of time is lost in the monotony ofexpectation, of hope, and of desire--which is only one: Get the ship tothe southward! Get the ship to the southward! The effect is curiouslymechanical; the sun climbs and descends, the night swings over ourheads as if somebody below the horizon were turning a crank. It isthe prettiest, the most aimless! . . . And all through that miserableperformance I go on, tramping, tramping the deck. How many miles haveI walked on the poop of that ship! A stubborn pilgrimage of sheerrestlessness, diversified by short excursions below to look upon Mr. Burns. I don't know whether it is an illusion, but he seems to becomemore substantial from day to day. He doesn't say much, for, indeed, thesituation doesn't lend itself to idle remarks. I notice this even withthe men as I watch them moving or sitting about the decks. They don'ttalk to each other. It strikes me that if there exists an invisibleear catching the whispers of the earth, it will find this ship the mostsilent spot on it. . . . 

"No, Mr. Burns has not much to say to me. He sits in his bunk withhis beard gone, his moustaches flaming, and with an air of silentdetermination on his chalky physiognomy. Ransome tells me he devours allthe food that is given him to the last scrap, but that, apparently, hesleeps very little. Even at night, when I go below to fill my pipe, I notice that, though dozing flat on his back, he still looks verydetermined. From the side glance he gives me when awake it seems asthough he were annoyed at being interrupted in some arduous mentaloperation; and as I emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the starsmeets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work ofthe Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed. Even as I have been decoyed into this awful, thisdeath-haunted command. . . . "

*****

The only spot of light in the ship at night was that of thecompass-lamps, lighting up the faces of the succeeding helmsmen; for therest we were lost in the darkness, I walking the poop and the men lyingabout the decks. They were all so reduced by sickness that no watchescould be kept. Those who were able to walk remained all the time onduty, lying about in the shadows of the main deck, till my voice raisedfor an order would bring them to their enfeebled feet, a totteringlittle group, moving patiently about the ship, with hardly a murmur, awhisper amongst them all. And every time I had to raise my voice it waswith a pang of remorse and pity. 

Then about four o'clock in the morning a light would gleam forward inthe galley. The unfailing Ransome with the uneasy heart, immune, serene, and active, was getting ready for the early coffee for the men. Presently he would bring me a cup up on the poop, and it was then that Iallowed myself to drop into my deck chair for a couple of hours of realsleep. No doubt I must have been snatching short dozes when leaningagainst the rail for a moment in sheer exhaustion; but, honestly, I wasnot aware of them, except in the painful form of convulsive starts thatseemed to come on me even while I walked. From about five, however, until after seven I would sleep openly under the fading stars. 

I would say to the helmsman: "Call me at need, " and drop into that chairand close my eyes, feeling that there was no more sleep for me on earth. And then I would know nothing till, some time between seven and eight, I would feel a touch on my shoulder and look up at Ransome's face, withits faint, wistful smile and friendly, gray eyes, as though he weretenderly amused at my slumbers. Occasionally the second mate would comeup and relieve me at early coffee time. But it didn't really matter. Generally it was a dead calm, or else faint airs so changing andfugitive that it really wasn't worth while to touch a brace for them. If the air steadied at all the seaman at the helm could be trusted fora warning shout: "Ship's all aback, sir!" which like a trumpet-call wouldmake me spring a foot above the deck. Those were the words which itseemed to me would have made me spring up from eternal sleep. But thiswas not often. I have never met since such breathless sunrises. And ifthe second mate happened to be there (he had generally one day in threefree of fever) I would find him sitting on the skylight half senseless, as it were, and with an idiotic gaze fastened on some object near by--arope, a cleat, a belaying pin, a ringbolt. 

That young man was rather troublesome. He remained cubbish in hissufferings. He seemed to have become completely imbecile; and when thereturn of fever drove him to his cabin below, the next thing would bethat we would miss him from there. The first time it happened Ransomeand I were very much alarmed. We started a quiet search and ultimatelyRansome discovered him curled up in the sail-locker, which openedinto the lobby by a sliding door. When remonstrated with, he mutteredsulkily, "It's cool in there. " That wasn't true. It was only dark there. 

The fundamental defects of his face were not improved by its uniformlivid hue. The disease disclosed its low type in a startling way. It wasnot so with many of the men. The wastage of ill-health seemed to idealisethe general character of the features, bringing out the unsuspectednobility of some, the strength of others, and in one case revealing anessentially comic aspect. He was a short, gingery, active man witha nose and chin of the Punch type, and whom his shipmates called"Frenchy. " I don't know why. He may have been a Frenchman, but I havenever heard him utter a single word in French. 

To see him coming aft to the wheel comforted one. The blue dungareetrousers turned up the calf, one leg a little higher than the other, theclean check shirt, the white canvas cap, evidently made by himself, madeup a whole of peculiar smartness, and the persistent jauntiness of hisgait, even, poor fellow, when he couldn't help tottering, told of hisinvincible spirit. There was also a man called Gambril. He was the onlygrizzled person in the ship. His face was of an austere type. But ifI remember all their faces, wasting tragically before my eyes, most oftheir names have vanished from my memory. 

The words that passed between us were few and puerile in regard of thesituation. I had to force myself to look them in the face. I expected tomeet reproachful glances. There were none. The expression of sufferingin their eyes was indeed hard enough to bear. But that they couldn'thelp. For the rest, I ask myself whether it was the temper of theirsouls or the sympathy of their imagination that made them so wonderful, so worthy of my undying regard. 

For myself, neither my soul was highly tempered, nor my imaginationproperly under control. There were moments when I felt, not only that Iwould go mad, but that I had gone mad already; so that I dared not openmy lips for fear of betraying myself by some insane shriek. Luckily Ihad only orders to give, and an order has a steadying influence upon himwho has to give it. Moreover, the seaman, the officer of the watch, inme was sufficiently sane. I was like a mad carpenter making a box. Werehe ever so convinced that he was King of Jerusalem, the box he wouldmake would be a sane box. What I feared was a shrill note escaping meinvoluntarily and upsetting my balance. Luckily, again, there was nonecessity to raise one's voice. The brooding stillness of the worldseemed sensitive to the slightest sound, like a whispering gallery. Theconversational tone would almost carry a word from one end of the shipto the other. The terrible thing was that the only voice that I everheard was my own. At night especially it reverberated very lonelyamongst the planes of the unstirring sails. 

Mr. Burns, still keeping to his bed with that air of secretdetermination, was moved to grumble at many things. Our interviewswere short five-minute affairs, but fairly frequent. I was everlastinglydiving down below to get a light, though I did not consume much tobaccoat that time. The pipe was always going out; for in truth my mind wasnot composed enough to enable me to get a decent smoke. Likewise, for most of the time during the twenty-four hours I could have struckmatches on deck and held them aloft till the flame burnt my fingers. ButI always used to run below. It was a change. It was the only break inthe incessant strain; and, of course, Mr. Burns through the open doorcould see me come in and go out every time. 

With his knees gathered up under his chin and staring with his greenisheyes over them, he was a weird figure, and with my knowledge of thecrazy notion in his head, not a very attractive one for me. Still, I hadto speak to him now and then, and one day he complained that the shipwas very silent. For hours and hours, he said, he was lying there, nothearing a sound, till he did not know what to do with himself. 

"When Ransome happens to be forward in his galley everything's so stillthat one might think everybody in the ship was dead, " he grumbled. "Theonly voice I do hear sometimes is yours, sir, and that isn't enough tocheer me up. What's the matter with the men? Isn't there one left thatcan sing out at the ropes?"

"Not one, Mr. Burns, " I said. "There is no breath to spare on board thisship for that. Are you aware that there are times when I can't mustermore than three hands to do anything?"

He asked swiftly but fearfully:

"Nobody dead yet, sir?"

"No. "

"It wouldn't do, " Mr. Burns declared forcibly. "Mustn't let him. If hegets hold of one he will get them all. "

I cried out angrily at this. I believe I even swore at the disturbingeffect of these words. They attacked all the self-possession that wasleft to me. In my endless vigil in the face of the enemy I had beenhaunted by gruesome images enough. I had had visions of a ship driftingin calms and swinging in light airs, with all her crew dying slowlyabout her decks. Such things had been known to happen. 

Mr. Burns met my outburst by a mysterious silence. 

"Look here, " I said. "You don't believe yourself what you say. Youcan't. It's impossible. It isn't the sort of thing I have a right toexpect from you. My position's bad enough without being worried withyour silly fancies. "

He remained unmoved. On account of the way in which the light fell onhis head I could not be sure whether he had smiled faintly or not. Ichanged my tone. 

"Listen, " I said. "It's getting so desperate that I had thought for amoment, since we can't make our way south, whether I wouldn't try tosteer west and make an attempt to reach the mailboat track. We couldalways get some quinine from her, at least. What do you think?"

He cried out: "No, no, no. Don't do that, sir. You mustn't for a momentgive up facing that old ruffian. If you do he will get the upper hand ofus. "

I left him. He was impossible. It was like a case of possession. Hisprotest, however, was essentially quite sound. As a matter of fact, mynotion of heading out west on the chance of sighting a problematicalsteamer could not bear calm examination. On the side where we were wehad enough wind, at least from time to time, to struggle on toward thesouth. Enough, at least, to keep hope alive. But suppose that I had usedthose capricious gusts of wind to sail away to the westward, into someregion where there was not a breath of air for days on end, what then?Perhaps my appalling vision of a ship floating with a dead crewwould become a reality for the discovery weeks afterward by somehorror-stricken mariners. 

That afternoon Ransome brought me up a cup of tea, and while waitingthere, tray in hand, he remarked in the exactly right tone of sympathy:

"You are holding out well, sir. "

"Yes, " I said. "You and I seem to have been forgotten. "

"Forgotten, sir?"

"Yes, by the fever-devil who has got on board this ship, " I said. 

Ransome gave me one of his attractive, intelligent, quick glances andwent away with the tray. It occurred to me that I had been talkingsomewhat in Mr. Burns' manner. It annoyed me. Yet often in darkermoments I forgot myself into an attitude toward our troubles more fitfor a contest against a living enemy. 

Yes. The fever-devil had not laid his hand yet either on Ransome or onme. But he might at any time. It was one of those thoughts one hadto fight down, keep at arm's length at any cost. It was unbearable tocontemplate the possibility of Ransome, the housekeeper of the ship, being laid low. And what would happen to my command if I got knockedover, with Mr. Burns too weak to stand without holding on to hisbed-place and the second mate reduced to a state of permanentimbecility? It was impossible to imagine, or rather, it was only tooeasy to imagine. 

I was alone on the poop. The ship having no steerage way, I had sent thehelmsman away to sit down or lie down somewhere in the shade. The men'sstrength was so reduced that all unnecessary calls on it had to beavoided. It was the austere Gambril with the grizzly beard. He went awayreadily enough, but he was so weakened by repeated bouts of fever, poor fellow, that in order to get down the poop ladder he had to turnsideways and hang on with both hands to the brass rail. It was justsimply heart-breaking to watch. Yet he was neither very much worse normuch better than most of the half-dozen miserable victims I could musterup on deck. 

It was a terribly lifeless afternoon. For several days in succession lowclouds had appeared in the distance, white masses with dark convolutionsresting on the water, motionless, almost solid, and yet all the timechanging their aspects subtly. Toward evening they vanished as a rule. But this day they awaited the setting sun, which glowed and smoulderedsulkily amongst them before it sank down. The punctual and wearisomestars reappeared over our mastheads, but the air remained stagnant andoppressive. 

The unfailing Ransome lighted the binnaclelamps and glided, all shadowy, up to me. 

"Will you go down and try to eat something, sir?" he suggested. 

His low voice startled me. I had been standing looking out over therail, saying nothing, feeling nothing, not even the weariness of mylimbs, overcome by the evil spell. 

"Ransome, " I asked abruptly, "how long have I been on deck? I am losingthe notion of time. "

"Twelve days, sir, " he said, "and it's just a fortnight since we leftthe anchorage. "

His equable voice sounded mournful somehow. He waited a bit, then added:"It's the first time that it looks as if we were to have some rain. "

I noticed then the broad shadow on the horizon, extinguishing the lowstars completely, while those overhead, when I looked up, seemed toshine down on us through a veil of smoke. 

How it got there, how it had crept up so high, I couldn't say. It had anominous appearance. The air did not stir. At a renewed invitation fromRansome I did go down into the cabin to--in his own words--"try and eatsomething. " I don't know that the trial was very successful. I supposeat that period I did exist on food in the usual way; but the memory isnow that in those days life was sustained on invincible anguish, as asort of infernal stimulant exciting and consuming at the same time. 

It's the only period of my life in which I attempted to keep a diary. No, not the only one. Years later, in conditions of moral isolation, Idid put down on paper the thoughts and events of a score of days. Butthis was the first time. I don't remember how it came about or how thepocketbook and the pencil came into my hands. It's inconceivable that Ishould have looked for them on purpose. I suppose they saved me from thecrazy trick of talking to myself. 

Strangely enough, in both cases I took to that sort of thing incircumstances in which I did not expect, in colloquial phrase, "to comeout of it. " Neither could I expect the record to outlast me. This showsthat it was purely a personal need for intimate relief and not a call ofegotism. 

Here I must give another sample of it, a few detached lines, nowlooking very ghostly to my own eyes, out of the part scribbled that veryevening:

*****

"There is something going on in the sky like a decomposition; like acorruption of the air, which remains as still as ever. After all, mereclouds, which may or may not hold wind or rain. Strange that it shouldtrouble me so. I feel as if all my sins had found me out. But I supposethe trouble is that the ship is still lying motionless, not undercommand; and that I have nothing to do to keep my imagination fromrunning wild amongst the disastrous images of the worst that may befallus. What's going to happen? Probably nothing. Or anything. It may be afurious squall coming, butt end foremost. And on deck there are fivemen with the vitality and the strength of, say, two. We may have all oursails blown away. Every stitch of canvas has been on her since we brokeground at the mouth of the Mei-nam, fifteen days ago . . . Or fifteencenturies. It seems to me that all my life before that momentous day isinfinitely remote, a fading memory of light-hearted youth, something onthe other side of a shadow. Yes, sails may very well be blown away. And that would be like a death sentence on the men. We haven't strengthenough on board to bend another suit; incredible thought, but it istrue. Or we may even get dismasted. Ships have been dismasted in squallssimply because they weren't handled quick enough, and we have nopower to whirl the yards around. It's like being bound hand and footpreparatory to having one's throat cut. And what appals me most of allis that I shrink from going on deck to face it. It's due to the ship, it's due to the men who are there on deck--some of them, ready to putout the last remnant of their strength at a word from me. And I amshrinking from it. From the mere vision. My first command. Now Iunderstand that strange sense of insecurity in my past. I alwayssuspected that I might be no good. And here is proof positive. I amshirking it. I am no good. "

*****

At that moment, or, perhaps, the moment after, I became aware of Ransomestanding in the cabin. Something in his expression startled me. It had ameaning which I could not make out. I exclaimed: "Somebody's dead. "

It was his turn then to look startled. 

"Dead? Not that I know of, sir. I have been in the forecastle only tenminutes ago and there was no dead man there then. "

"You did give me a scare, " I said. 

His voice was extremely pleasant to listen to. He explained that he hadcome down below to close Mr. Burns' port in case it should come on torain. "He did not know that I was in the cabin, " he added. 

"How does it look outside?" I asked him. 

"Very black, indeed, sir. There is something in it for certain. "

"In what quarter?"

"All round, sir. "

I repeated idly: "All round. For certain, " with my elbows on the table. 

Ransome lingered in the cabin as if he had something to do there, buthesitated about doing it. I said suddenly:

"You think I ought to be on deck?"

He answered at once but without any particular emphasis or accent: "Ido, sir. "

I got to my feet briskly, and he made way for me to go out. As I passedthrough the lobby I heard Mr. Burns' voice saying:

"Shut the door of my room, will you, steward?" And Ransome's rathersurprised: "Certainly, sir. "

I thought that all my feelings had been dulled into completeindifference. But I found it as trying as ever to be on deck. Theimpenetrable blackness beset the ship so close that it seemed thatby thrusting one's hand over the side one could touch some unearthlysubstance. There was in it an effect of inconceivable terror and ofinexpressible mystery. The few stars overhead shed a dim light uponthe ship alone, with no gleams of any kind upon the water, in detachedshafts piercing an atmosphere which had turned to soot. It was somethingI had never seen before, giving no hint of the direction from which anychange would come, the closing in of a menace from all sides. 

There was still no man at the helm. The immobility of all things wasperfect. If the air had turned black, the sea, for all I knew, mighthave turned solid. It was no good looking in any direction, watchingfor any sign, speculating upon the nearness of the moment. When the timecame the blackness would overwhelm silently the bit of starlight fallingupon the ship, and the end of all things would come without a sigh, stir, or murmur of any kind, and all our hearts would cease to beat likerun-down clocks. 

It was impossible to shake off that sense of finality. The quietnessthat came over me was like a foretaste of annihilation. It gave me asort of comfort, as though my soul had become suddenly reconciled to aneternity of blind stillness. 

The seaman's instinct alone survived whole in my moral dissolution. Idescended the ladder to the quarter-deck. The starlight seemed to dieout before reaching that spot, but when I asked quietly: "Are you there, men?" my eyes made out shadow forms starting up around me, very few, very indistinct; and a voice spoke: "All here, sir. " Another amendedanxiously:

"All that are any good for anything, sir. "

Both voices were very quiet and unringing; without any special characterof readiness or discouragement. Very matter-of-fact voices. 

"We must try to haul this mainsail close up, " I said. 

The shadows swayed away from me without a word. Those men were theghosts of themselves, and their weight on a rope could be no more thanthe weight of a bunch of ghosts. Indeed, if ever a sail was hauled upby sheer spiritual strength it must have been that sail, for, properlyspeaking, there was not muscle enough for the task in the whole ship letalone the miserable lot of us on deck. Of course, I took the lead in thework myself. They wandered feebly after me from rope to rope, stumblingand panting. They toiled like Titans. We were half-an-hour at it atleast, and all the time the black universe made no sound. When the lastleech-line was made fast, my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, madeout the shapes of exhausted men drooping over the rails, collapsed onhatches. One hung over the after-capstan, sobbing for breath, and Istood amongst them like a tower of strength, impervious to disease andfeeling only the sickness of my soul. I waited for some time fightingagainst the weight of my sins, against my sense of unworthiness, andthen I said:

"Now, men, we'll go aft and square the mainyard. That's about all we cando for the ship; and for the rest she must take her chance. "

VI

As we all went up it occurred to me that there ought to be a man at thehelm. I raised my voice not much above a whisper, and, noiselessly, anuncomplaining spirit in a fever-wasted body appeared in the light aft, the head with hollow eyes illuminated against the blackness which hadswallowed up our world--and the universe. The bared forearm extendedover the upper spokes seemed to shine with a light of its own. 

I murmured to that luminous appearance:

"Keep the helm right amidships. "

It answered in a tone of patient suffering:

"Right amidships, sir. "

Then I descended to the quarter-deck. It was impossible to tellwhence the blow would come. To look round the ship was to look into abottomless, black pit. The eye lost itself in inconceivable depths. 

I wanted to ascertain whether the ropes had been picked up off thedeck. One could only do that by feeling with one's feet. In my cautiousprogress I came against a man in whom I recognized Ransome. He possessedan unimpaired physical solidity which was manifest to me at the contact. He was leaning against the quarter-deck capstan and kept silent. It waslike a revelation. He was the collapsed figure sobbing for breath I hadnoticed before we went on the poop. 

"You have been helping with the mainsail!" I exclaimed in a low tone. 

"Yes, sir, " sounded his quiet voice. 

"Man! What were you thinking of? You mustn't do that sort of thing. "

After a pause he assented: "I suppose I mustn't. " Then after anothershort silence he added: "I am all right now, " quickly, between thetell-tale gasps. 

I could neither hear nor see anybody else; but when I spoke up, answering sad murmurs filled the quarter-deck, and its shadows seemed toshift here and there. I ordered all the halyards laid down on deck clearfor running. 

"I'll see to that, sir, " volunteered Ransome in his natural, pleasanttone, which comforted one and aroused one's compassion, too, somehow. 

That man ought to have been in his bed, resting, and my plain duty wasto send him there. But perhaps he would not have obeyed me; I had notthe strength of mind to try. All I said was:

"Go about it quietly, Ransome. "

Returning on the poop I approached Gambril. His face, set with hollowshadows in the light, looked awful, finally silenced. I asked him how hefelt, but hardly expected an answer. Therefore, I was astonished at hiscomparative loquacity. 

"Them shakes leaves me as weak as a kitten, sir, " he said, preservingfinely that air of unconsciousness as to anything but his business ahelmsman should never lose. "And before I can pick up my strength thatthere hot fit comes along and knocks me over again. "

He sighed. There was no reproach in his tone, but the bare words wereenough to give me a horrible pang of self-reproach. It held me dumb fora time. When the tormenting sensation had passed off I asked:

"Do you feel strong enough to prevent the rudder taking charge if shegets sternway on her? It wouldn't do to get something smashed about thesteering-gear now. We've enough difficulties to cope with as it is. "

He answered with just a shade of weariness that he was strong enough tohang on. He could promise me that she shouldn't take the wheel out ofhis hands. More he couldn't say. 

At that moment Ransome appeared quite close to me, stepping out of thedarkness into visibility suddenly, as if just created with his composedface and pleasant voice. 

Every rope on deck, he said, was laid down clear for running, as far asone could make certain by feeling. It was impossible to see anything. Frenchy had stationed himself forward. He said he had a jump or two leftin him yet. 

Here a faint smile altered for an instant the clear, firm designof Ransome's lips. With his serious clear, gray eyes, his serenetemperament--he was a priceless man altogether. Soul as firm as themuscles of his body. 

He was the only man on board (except me, but I had to preserve myliberty of movement) who had a sufficiency of muscular strength to trustto. For a moment I thought I had better ask him to take the wheel. Butthe dreadful knowledge of the enemy he had to carry about him made mehesitate. In my ignorance of physiology it occurred to me that he mightdie suddenly, from excitement, at a critical moment. 

While this gruesome fear restrained the ready words on the tip of mytongue, Ransome stepped back two paces and vanished from my sight. 

At once an uneasiness possessed me, as if some support had beenwithdrawn. I moved forward, too, outside the circle of light, intothe darkness that stood in front of me like a wall. In one stride Ipenetrated it. Such must have been the darkness before creation. It hadclosed behind me. I knew I was invisible to the man at the helm. Neithercould I see anything. He was alone, I was alone, every man was alonewhere he stood. And every form was gone, too, spar, sail, fittings, rails; everything was blotted out in the dreadful smoothness of thatabsolute night. 

A flash of lightning would have been a relief--I mean physically. Iwould have prayed for it if it hadn't been for my shrinking apprehensionof the thunder. In the tension of silence I was suffering from it seemedto me that the first crash must turn me into dust. 

And thunder was, most likely, what would happen next. Stiff all over andhardly breathing, I waited with a horribly strained expectation. Nothinghappened. It was maddening, but a dull, growing ache in the lower partof my face made me aware that I had been grinding my teeth madly enough, for God knows how long. 

It's extraordinary I should not have heard myself doing it; but Ihadn't. By an effort which absorbed all my faculties I managed to keepmy jaw still. It required much attention, and while thus engaged Ibecame bothered by curious, irregular sounds of faint tapping on thedeck. They could be heard single, in pairs, in groups. While I wonderedat this mysterious devilry, I received a slight blow under the lefteye and felt an enormous tear run down my cheek. Raindrops. Enormous. Forerunners of something. Tap. Tap. Tap. . . . 

I turned about, and, addressing Gambrel earnestly, entreated him to"hang on to the wheel. " But I could hardly speak from emotion. Thefatal moment had come. I held my breath. The tapping had stoppedas unexpectedly as it had begun, and there was a renewed moment ofintolerable suspense; something like an additional turn of the rackingscrew. I don't suppose I would have ever screamed, but I remember myconviction that there was nothing else for it but to scream. 

Suddenly--how am I to convey it? Well, suddenly the darkness turned intowater. This is the only suitable figure. A heavy shower, a downpour, comes along, making a noise. You hear its approach on the sea, in theair, too, I verily believe. But this was different. With no preliminarywhisper or rustle, without a splash, and even without the ghostof impact, I became instantaneously soaked to the skin. Not a verydifficult matter, since I was wearing only my sleeping suit. My hairgot full of water in an instant, water streamed on my skin, it filledmy nose, my ears, my eyes. In a fraction of a second I swallowed quite alot of it. 

As to Gambril, he was fairly choked. He coughed pitifully, the brokencough of a sick man; and I beheld him as one sees a fish in an aquariumby the light of an electric bulb, an elusive, phosphorescent shape. Onlyhe did not glide away. But something else happened. Both binnaclelampswent out. I suppose the water forced itself into them, though I wouldn'thave thought that possible, for they fitted into the cowl perfectly. 

The last gleam of light in the universe had gone, pursued by a lowexclamation of dismay from Gambril. I groped for him and seized his arm. How startlingly wasted it was. 

"Never mind, " I said. "You don't want the light. All you need to dois to keep the wind, when it comes, at the back of your head. Youunderstand?"

"Aye, aye, sir. . . . But I should like to have a light, " he addednervously. 

All that time the ship lay as steady as a rock. The noise of the waterpouring off the sails and spars, flowing over the break of the poop, hadstopped short. The poop scuppers gurgled and sobbed for a littlewhile longer, and then perfect silence, joined to perfect immobility, proclaimed the yet unbroken spell of our helplessness, poised on theedge of some violent issue, lurking in the dark. 

I started forward restlessly. I did not need my sight to pace the poopof my ill-starred first command with perfect assurance. Every squarefoot of her decks was impressed indelibly on my brain, to the verygrain and knots of the planks. Yet, all of a sudden, I fell clean oversomething, landing full length on my hands and face. 

It was something big and alive. Not a dog--more like a sheep, rather. Butthere were no animals in the ship. How could an animal. . . . It was anadded and fantastic horror which I could not resist. The hair of myhead stirred even as I picked myself up, awfully scared; not as a manis scared while his judgment, his reason still try to resist, butcompletely, boundlessly, and, as it were, innocently scared--like alittle child. 

I could see It--that Thing! The darkness, of which so much had justturned into water, had thinned down a little. There It was! But I didnot hit upon the notion of Mr. Burns issuing out of the companion on allfours till he attempted to stand up, and even then the idea of a bearcrossed my mind first. 

He growled like one when I seized him round the body. He had buttonedhimself up into an enormous winter overcoat of some woolly material, theweight of which was too much for his reduced state. I could hardly feelthe incredibly thin lath of his body, lost within the thick stuff, buthis growl had depth and substance: Confounded dump ship with a craven, tiptoeing crowd. Why couldn't they stamp and go with a brace? Wasn'tthere one Godforsaken lubber in the lot fit to raise a yell on a rope?

"Skulking's no good, sir, " he attacked me directly. "You can't slinkpast the old murderous ruffian. It isn't the way. You must go for himboldly--as I did. Boldness is what you want. Show him that you don'tcare for any of his damned tricks. Kick up a jolly old row. "

"Good God, Mr. Burns, " I said angrily. "What on earth are you up to?What do you mean by coming up on deck in this state?"

"Just that! Boldness. The only way to scare the old bullying rascal. "

I pushed him, still growling, against the rail. "Hold on to it, " I saidroughly. I did not know what to do with him. I left him in a hurry, togo to Gambril, who had called faintly that he believed there was somewind aloft. Indeed, my own ears had caught a feeble flutter of wetcanvas, high up overhead, the jingle of a slack chain sheet. . . . 

These were eerie, disturbing, alarming sounds in the dead stillnessof the air around me. All the instances I had heard of topmasts beingwhipped out of a ship while there was not wind enough on her deck toblow out a match rushed into my memory. 

"I can't see the upper sails, sir, " declared Gambril shakily. 

"Don't move the helm. You'll be all right, " I said confidently. 

The poor man's nerves were gone. Mine were not in much better case. It was the moment of breaking strain and was relieved by the abruptsensation of the ship moving forward as if of herself under my feet. I heard plainly the soughing of the wind aloft, the low cracks ofthe upper spars taking the strain, long before I could feel the leastdraught on my face turned aft, anxious and sightless like the face of ablind man. 

Suddenly a louder-sounding note filled our ears, the darkness startedstreaming against our bodies, chilling them exceedingly. Both of us, Gambril and I, shivered violently in our clinging, soaked garments ofthin cotton. I said to him:

"You are all right now, my man. All you've got to do is to keep the windat the back of your head. Surely you are up to that. A child could steerthis ship in smooth water. "

He muttered: "Aye! A healthy child. " And I felt ashamed of having beenpassed over by the fever which had been preying on every man's strengthbut mine, in order that my remorse might be the more bitter, the feelingof unworthiness more poignant, and the sense of responsibility heavierto bear. 

The ship had gathered great way on her almost at once on the calm water. I felt her slipping through it with no other noise but a mysteriousrustle alongside. Otherwise, she had no motion at all, neither lift norroll. It was a disheartening steadiness which had lasted for eighteendays now; for never, never had we had wind enough in that time to raisethe slightest run of the sea. The breeze freshened suddenly. I thoughtit was high time to get Mr. Burns off the deck. He worried me. I lookedupon him as a lunatic who would be very likely to start roaming over theship and break a limb or fall overboard. 

I was truly glad to find he had remained holding on where I had lefthim, sensibly enough. He was, however, muttering to himself ominously. 

This was discouraging. I remarked in a matter-of-fact tone:

"We have never had so much wind as this since we left the roads. "

"There's some heart in it, too, " he growled judiciously. It was a remarkof a perfectly sane seaman. But he added immediately: "It was about timeI should come on deck. I've been nursing my strength for this--just forthis. Do you see it, sir?"

I said I did, and proceeded to hint that it would be advisable for himto go below now and take a rest. 

His answer was an indignant "Go below! Not if I know it, sir. "

Very cheerful! He was a horrible nuisance. And all at once he started toargue. I could feel his crazy excitement in the dark. 

"You don't know how to go about it, sir. How could you? All thiswhispering and tiptoeing is no good. You can't hope to slink past acunning, wide-awake, evil brute like he was. You never heard him talk. Enough to make your hair stand on end. No! No! He wasn't mad. He wasno more mad than I am. He was just downright wicked. Wicked so as tofrighten most people. I will tell you what he was. He was nothingless than a thief and a murderer at heart. And do you think he's anydifferent now because he's dead? Not he! His carcass lies a hundredfathom under, but he's just the same . . . In latitude 8 d 20' north. "

He snorted defiantly. I noted with weary resignation that the breeze hadgot lighter while he raved. He was at it again. 

"I ought to have thrown the beggar out of the ship over the rail like adog. It was only on account of the men. . . . Fancy having to read theBurial Service over a brute like that! . . . 'Our departed brother' . . . I could have laughed. That was what he couldn't bear. I suppose I amthe only man that ever stood up to laugh at him. When he got sick itused to scare that . . . Brother. . . . Brother. . . . Departed. . . . Sooner call a shark brother. "

The breeze had let go so suddenly that the way of the ship brought thewet sails heavily against the mast. The spell of deadly stillness hadcaught us up again. There seemed to be no escape. 

"Hallo!" exclaimed Mr. Burns in a startled voice. "Calm again!"

I addressed him as though he had been sane. 

"This is the sort of thing we've been having for seventeen days, Mr. Burns, " I said with intense bitterness. "A puff, then a calm, and in amoment, you'll see, she'll be swinging on her heel with her head awayfrom her course to the devil somewhere. "

He caught at the word. "The old dodging Devil, " he screamed piercinglyand burst into such a loud laugh as I had never heard before. It was aprovoking, mocking peal, with a hair-raising, screeching over-note ofdefiance. I stepped back, utterly confounded. 

Instantly there was a stir on the quarter-deck; murmurs of dismay. Adistressed voice cried out in the dark below us: "Who's that gone crazy, now?"

Perhaps they thought it was their captain? Rush is not the word thatcould be applied to the utmost speed the poor fellows were up to; butin an amazing short time every man in the ship able to walk upright hadfound his way on to that poop. 

I shouted to them: "It's the mate. Lay hold of him a couple ofyou. . . . "

I expected this performance to end in a ghastly sort of fight. ButMr. Burns cut his derisive screeching dead short and turned upon themfiercely, yelling:

"Aha! Dog-gone ye! You've found your tongues--have ye? I thoughtyou were dumb. Well, then--laugh! Laugh--I tell you. Now then--alltogether. One, two, three--laugh!"

A moment of silence ensued, of silence so profound that you could haveheard a pin drop on the deck. Then Ransome's unperturbed voice utteredpleasantly the words:

"I think he has fainted, sir--" The little motionless knot of menstirred, with low murmurs of relief. "I've got him under the arms. Gethold of his legs, some one. "

Yes. It was a relief. He was silenced for a time--for a time. I couldnot have stood another peal of that insane screeching. I was sure of it;and just then Gambril, the austere Gambril, treated us to another vocalperformance. He began to sing out for relief. His voice wailed pitifullyin the darkness: "Come aft somebody! I can't stand this. Here she'll beoff again directly and I can't. . . . "

I dashed aft myself meeting on my way a hard gust of wind whose approachGambril's ear had detected from afar and which filled the sails on themain in a series of muffled reports mingled with the low plaint ofthe spars. I was just in time to seize the wheel while Frenchy who hadfollowed me caught up the collapsing Gambril. He hauled him out of theway, admonished him to lie still where he was, and then stepped up torelieve me, asking calmly:

"How am I to steer her, sir?"

"Dead before it for the present. I'll get you a light in a moment. "

But going forward I met Ransome bringing up the spare binnacle lamp. That man noticed everything, attended to everything, shed comfort aroundhim as he moved. As he passed me he remarked in a soothing tone thatthe stars were coming out. They were. The breeze was sweeping clear thesooty sky, breaking through the indolent silence of the sea. 

The barrier of awful stillness which had encompassed us for so many daysas though we had been accursed, was broken. I felt that. I let myselffall on to the skylight seat. A faint white ridge of foam, thin, verythin, broke alongside. The first for ages--for ages. I could havecheered, if it hadn't been for the sense of guilt which clung to all mythoughts secretly. Ransome stood before me. 

"What about the mate, " I asked anxiously. "Still unconscious?"

"Well, sir--it's funny, " Ransome was evidently puzzled. "He hasn'tspoken a word, and his eyes are shut. But it looks to me more like soundsleep than anything else. "

I accepted this view as the least troublesome of any, or at any rate, least disturbing. Dead faint or deep slumber, Mr. Burns had to be leftto himself for the present. Ransome remarked suddenly:

"I believe you want a coat, sir. "

"I believe I do, " I sighed out. 

But I did not move. What I felt I wanted were new limbs. My arms andlegs seemed utterly useless, fairly worn out. They didn't even ache. ButI stood up all the same to put on the coat when Ransome brought it up. And when he suggested that he had better now "take Gambril forward, " Isaid:

"All right. I'll help you to get him down on the main deck. "

I found that I was quite able to help, too. We raised Gambril up betweenus. He tried to help himself along like a man but all the time he wasinquiring piteously:

"You won't let me go when we come to the ladder? You won't let me gowhen we come to the ladder?"

The breeze kept on freshening and blew true, true to a hair. At daylightby careful manipulation of the helm we got the foreyards to run squareby themselves (the water keeping smooth) and then went about haulingthe ropes tight. Of the four men I had with me at night, I could see nowonly two. I didn't inquire as to the others. They had given in. For atime only I hoped. 

Our various tasks forward occupied us for hours, the two men with memoved so slow and had to rest so often. One of them remarked that "everyblamed thing in the ship felt about a hundred times heavier than itsproper weight. " This was the only complaint uttered. I don't know whatwe should have done without Ransome. He worked with us, silent, too, with a little smile frozen on his lips. From time to time I murmured tohim: "Go steady"--"Take it easy, Ransome"--and received a quick glancein reply. 

When we had done all we could do to make things safe, he disappearedinto his galley. Some time afterward, going forward for a look round, Icaught sight of him through the open door. He sat upright on the lockerin front of the stove, with his head leaning back against the bulkhead. His eyes were closed; his capable hands held open the front of histhin cotton shirt baring tragically his powerful chest, which heaved inpainful and laboured gasps. He didn't hear me. 

I retreated quietly and went straight on to the poop to relieve Frenchy, who by that time was beginning to look very sick. He gave me the coursewith great formality and tried to go off with a jaunty step, but reeledwidely twice before getting out of my sight. 

And then I remained all alone aft, steering my ship, which ran beforethe wind with a buoyant lift now and then, and even rolling a little. Presently Ransome appeared before me with a tray. The sight of food mademe ravenous all at once. He took the wheel while I sat down of the aftergrating to eat my breakfast. 

"This breeze seems to have done for our crowd, " he murmured. "It justlaid them low--all hands. "

"Yes, " I said. "I suppose you and I are the only two fit men in theship. "

"Frenchy says there's still a jump left in him. I don't know. It can'tbe much, " continued Ransome with his wistful smile. "Good little manthat. But suppose, sir, that this wind flies round when we are close tothe land--what are we going to do with her?"

"If the wind shifts round heavily after we close in with the land shewill either run ashore or get dismasted or both. We won't be able to doanything with her. She's running away with us now. All we can do is tosteer her. She's a ship without a crew. "

"Yes. All laid low, " repeated Ransome quietly. "I do give them a look-inforward every now and then, but it's precious little I can do for them. "

"I, and the ship, and every one on board of her, are very much indebtedto you, Ransome, " I said warmly. 

He made as though he had not heard me, and steered in silence till I wasready to relieve him. He surrendered the wheel, picked up the tray, andfor a parting shot informed me that Mr. Burns was awake and seemed tohave a mind to come up on deck. 

"I don't know how to prevent him, sir. I can't very well stop down belowall the time. "

It was clear that he couldn't. And sure enough Mr. Burns came on deckdragging himself painfully aft in his enormous overcoat. I beheld himwith a natural dread. To have him around and raving about the wiles ofa dead man while I had to steer a wildly rushing ship full of dying menwas a rather dreadful prospect. 

But his first remarks were quite sensible in meaning and tone. Apparently he had no recollection of the night scene. And if he had hedidn't betray himself once. Neither did he talk very much. He sat onthe skylight looking desperately ill at first, but that strong breeze, before which the last remnant of my crew had wilted down, seemed to blowa fresh stock of vigour into his frame with every gust. One could almostsee the process. 

By way of sanity test I alluded on purpose to the late captain. I wasdelighted to find that Mr. Burns did not display undue interest in thesubject. He ran over the old tale of that savage ruffian's iniquitieswith a certain vindictive gusto and then concluded unexpectedly:

"I do believe, sir, that his brain began to go a year or more before hedied. "

A wonderful recovery. I could hardly spare it as much admiration as itdeserved, for I had to give all my mind to the steering. 

In comparison with the hopeless languour of the preceding days this wasdizzy speed. Two ridges of foam streamed from the ship's bows; the windsang in a strenuous note which under other circumstances would haveexpressed to me all the joy of life. Whenever the hauled-up mainsailstarted trying to slat and bang itself to pieces in its gear, Mr. Burnswould look at me apprehensively. 

"What would you have me to do, Mr. Burns? We can neither furl it nor setit. I only wish the old thing would thrash itself to pieces and be donewith it. That beastly racket confuses me. "

Mr. Burns wrung his hands, and cried out suddenly:

"How will you get the ship into harbour, sir, without men to handleher?"

And I couldn't tell him. 

Well--it did get done about forty hours afterward. By the exorcisingvirtue of Mr. Burns' awful laugh, the malicious spectre had been laid, the evil spell broken, the curse removed. We were now in the hands of akind and energetic Providence. It was rushing us on. . . . 

I shall never forget the last night, dark, windy, and starry. I steered. Mr. Burns, after having obtained from me a solemn promise to give hima kick if anything happened, went frankly to sleep on the deck closeto the binnacle. Convalescents need sleep. Ransome, his back proppedagainst the mizzen-mast and a blanket over his legs, remained perfectlystill, but I don't suppose he closed his eyes for a moment. Thatembodiment of jauntiness, Frenchy, still under the delusion that therewas a "jump" left in him, had insisted on joining us; but mindful ofdiscipline, had laid himself down as far on the forepart of the poop ashe could get, alongside the bucket-rack. 

And I steered, too tired for anxiety, too tired for connected thought. I had moments of grim exultation and then my heart would sink awfully atthe thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark deck, fullof fever-stricken men--some of them dying. By my fault. But never mind. Remorse must wait. I had to steer. 

In the small hours the breeze weakened, then failed altogether. Aboutfive it returned, gentle enough, enabling us to head for the roadstead. Daybreak found Mr. Burns sitting wedged up with coils of rope on thestern-grating, and from the depths of his overcoat steering the shipwith very white bony hands; while Ransome and I rushed along the decksletting go all the sheets and halliards by the run. We dashed next up onto the forecastle head. The perspiration of labour and sheer nervousnesssimply poured off our heads as we toiled to get the anchors cock-billed. I dared not look at Ransome as we worked side by side. We exchanged curtwords; I could hear him panting close to me and I avoided turning myeyes his way for fear of seeing him fall down and expire in the act ofputting forth his strength--for what? Indeed for some distinct ideal. 

The consummate seaman in him was aroused. He needed no directions. Heknew what to do. Every effort, every movement was an act of consistentheroism. It was not for me to look at a man thus inspired. 

At last all was ready and I heard him say:

"Hadn't I better go down and open the compressors now, sir?"

"Yes. Do, " I said. 

And even then I did not glance his way. After a time his voice came upfrom the main deck. 

"When you like, sir. All clear on the windlass here. "

I made a sign to Mr. Burns to put the helm down and let both anchors goone after another, leaving the ship to take as much cable as she wanted. She took the best part of them both before she brought up. The loosesails coming aback ceased their maddening racket above my head. Aperfect stillness reigned in the ship. And while I stood forward feelinga little giddy in that sudden peace, I caught faintly a moan or two andthe incoherent mutterings of the sick in the forecastle. 

As we had a signal for medical assistance flying on the mizzen it is afact that before the ship was fairly at rest three steam launches fromvarious men-of-war were alongside; and at least five naval surgeons hadclambered on board. They stood in a knot gazing up and down the emptymain deck, then looked aloft--where not a man could be seen, either. 

I went toward them--a solitary figure, in a blue and gray stripedsleeping suit and a pipe-clayed cork helmet on its head. Their disgustwas extreme. They had expected surgical cases. Each one had broughthis carving tools with him. But they soon got over their littledisappointment. In less than five minutes one of the steam launches wasrushing shoreward to order a big boat and some hospital people for theremoval of the crew. The big steam pinnace went off to her ship to bringover a few bluejackets to furl my sails for me. 

One of the surgeons had remained on board. He came out of the forecastlelooking impenetrable, and noticed my inquiring gaze. 

"There's nobody dead in there, if that's what you want to know, " he saiddeliberately. Then added in a tone of wonder: "The whole crew!"

"And very bad?"

"And very bad, " he repeated. His eyes were roaming all over the ship. "Heavens! What's that?"

"That, " I said, glancing aft, "is Mr. Burns, my chief officer. "

Mr. Burns with his moribund head nodding on the stalk of his lean neckwas a sight for any one to exclaim at. The surgeon asked:

"Is he going to the hospital, too?"

"Oh, no, " I said jocosely. "Mr. Burns can't go on shore till themainmast goes. I am very proud of him. He's my only convalescent. "

"You look--" began the doctor staring at me. But I interrupted himangrily:

"I am not ill. "

"No. . . . You look queer. "

"Well, you see, I have been seventeen days on deck. "

"Seventeen! . . . But you must have slept. "

"I suppose I must have. I don't know. But I'm certain that I didn'tsleep for the last forty hours. "

"Phew! . . . You will be going ashore presently I suppose?"

"As soon as ever I can. There's no end of business waiting for methere. "

The surgeon released my hand, which he had taken while we talked, pulledout his pocket-book, wrote in it rapidly, tore out the page and offeredit to me. 

"I strongly advise you to get this prescription made up for yourselfashore. Unless I am much mistaken you will need it this evening. "

"What is it, then?" I asked with suspicion. 

"Sleeping draught, " answered the surgeon curtly; and moving with an airof interest toward Mr. Burns he engaged him in conversation. 

As I went below to dress to go ashore, Ransome followed me. He begged mypardon; he wished, too, to be sent ashore and paid off. 

I looked at him in surprise. He was waiting for my answer with an air ofanxiety. 

"You don't mean to leave the ship!" I cried out. 

"I do really, sir. I want to go and be quiet somewhere. Anywhere. Thehospital will do. "

"But, Ransome, " I said. "I hate the idea of parting with you. "

"I must go, " he broke in. "I have a right!" . . . He gasped and a lookof almost savage determination passed over his face. For an instant hewas another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness ofthe man the humble reality of things. Life was a boon to him--thisprecarious hard life, and he was thoroughly alarmed about himself. 

"Of course I shall pay you off if you wish it, " I hastened to say. "OnlyI must ask you to remain on board till this afternoon. I can't leave Mr. Burns absolutely by himself in the ship for hours. "

He softened at once and assured me with a smile and in his naturalpleasant voice that he understood that very well. 

When I returned on deck everything was ready for the removal of themen. It was the last ordeal of that episode which had been maturing andtempering my character--though I did not know it. 

It was awful. They passed under my eyes one after another--each of theman embodied reproach of the bitterest kind, till I felt a sort of revoltwake up in me. Poor Frenchy had gone suddenly under. He was carriedpast me insensible, his comic face horribly flushed and as if swollen, breathing stertorously. He looked more like Mr. Punch than ever; adisgracefully intoxicated Mr. Punch. 

The austere Gambril, on the contrary, had improved temporarily. He insisted on walking on his own feet to the rail--of course withassistance on each side of him. But he gave way to a sudden panic at themoment of being swung over the side and began to wail pitifully:

"Don't let them drop me, sir. Don't let them drop me, sir!" While I kepton shouting to him in most soothing accents: "All right, Gambril. Theywon't! They won't!"

It was no doubt very ridiculous. The bluejackets on our deck weregrinning quietly, while even Ransome himself (much to the fore inlending a hand) had to enlarge his wistful smile for a fleeting moment. 

I left for the shore in the steam pinnace, and on looking back beheldMr. Burns actually standing up by the taffrail, still in his enormouswoolly overcoat. The bright sunlight brought out his weirdnessamazingly. He looked like a frightful and elaborate scarecrow set up onthe poop of a death-stricken ship, set up to keep the seabirds from thecorpses. 

Our story had got about already in town and everybody on shore was mostkind. The Marine Office let me off the port dues, and as there happenedto be a shipwrecked crew staying in the Home I had no difficulty inobtaining as many men as I wanted. But when I inquired if I couldsee Captain Ellis for a moment I was told in accents of pity for myignorance that our deputy-Neptune had retired and gone home on apension about three weeks after I left the port. So I suppose that myappointment was the last act, outside the daily routine, of his officiallife. 

It is strange how on coming ashore I was struck by the springy step, the lively eyes, the strong vitality of every one I met. It impressed meenormously. And amongst those I met there was Captain Giles, of course. It would have been very extraordinary if I had not met him. A prolongedstroll in the business part of the town was the regular employment ofall his mornings when he was ashore. 

I caught the glitter of the gold watch-chain across his chest ever sofar away. He radiated benevolence. 

"What is it I hear?" he queried with a "kind uncle" smile, after shakinghands. "Twenty-one days from Bangkok?"

"Is this all you've heard?" I said. "You must come to tiffin with me. Iwant you to know exactly what you have let me in for. "

He hesitated for almost a minute. 

"Well--I will, " he said condescendingly at last. 

We turned into the hotel. I found to my surprise that I could eat quitea lot. Then over the cleared table-cloth I unfolded to Captain Gilesthe history of these twenty days in all its professional and emotionalaspects, while he smoked patiently the big cigar I had given him. 

Then he observed sagely:

"You must feel jolly well tired by this time. "

"No, " I said. "Not tired. But I'll tell you, Captain Giles, how I feel. I feel old. And I must be. All of you on shore look to me just a lot ofskittish youngsters that have never known a care in the world. "

He didn't smile. He looked insufferably exemplary. He declared:

"That will pass. But you do look older--it's a fact. "

"Aha!" I said. 

"No! No! The truth is that one must not make too much of anything inlife, good or bad. "

"Live at half-speed, " I murmured perversely. "Not everybody can dothat. "

"You'll be glad enough presently if you can keep going even at thatrate, " he retorted with his air of conscious virtue. "And there'sanother thing: a man should stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes, to his conscience and all that sort of thing. Why--what else would youhave to fight against. "

I kept silent. I don't know what he saw in my face but he askedabruptly:

"Why--you aren't faint-hearted?"

"God only knows, Captain Giles, " was my sincere answer. 

"That's all right, " he said calmly. "You will learn soon how not to befaint-hearted. A man has got to learn everything--and that's what somany of them youngsters don't understand. "

"Well, I am no longer a youngster. "

"No, " he conceded. "Are you leaving soon?"

"I am going on board directly, " I said. "I shall pick up one of myanchors and heave in to half-cable on the other directly my new crewcomes on board and I shall be off at daylight to-morrow!"

"You will, " grunted Captain Giles approvingly, "that's the way. You'lldo. "

"What did you think? That I would want to take a week ashore for arest?" I said, irritated by his tone. "There's no rest for me till she'sout in the Indian Ocean and not much of it even then. "

He puffed at his cigar moodily, as if transformed. 

"Yes. That's what it amounts to, " he said in a musing tone. It was asif a ponderous curtain had rolled up disclosing an unexpected CaptainGiles. But it was only for a moment, just the time to let him add, "Precious little rest in life for anybody. Better not think of it. "

We rose, left the hotel, and parted from each other in the street witha warm handshake, just as he began to interest me for the first time inour intercourse. 

The first thing I saw when I got back to the ship was Ransome on thequarter-deck sitting quietly on his neatly lashed sea-chest. 

I beckoned him to follow me into the saloon where I sat down to write aletter of recommendation for him to a man I knew on shore. 

When finished I pushed it across the table. "It may be of some good toyou when you leave the hospital. "

He took it, put it in his pocket. His eyes were looking away fromme--nowhere. His face was anxiously set. 

"How are you feeling now?" I asked. 

"I don't feel bad now, sir, " he answered stiffly. "But I am afraid ofits coming on. . . . " The wistful smile came back on his lips for amoment. "I--I am in a blue funk about my heart, sir. "

I approached him with extended hand. His eyes not looking at me had astrained expression. He was like a man listening for a warning call. 

"Won't you shake hands, Ransome?" I said gently. 

He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench--andnext moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up thecompanion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of startinginto sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate to carryconsciously within his faithful breast.