“Not much sign of any wind yet,” I remarked when he approached.

“No, sir.  Not much,” he assented, sleepily, in his hoarse voice, with just enough deference, no more, and barely suppressing a yawn.

“Well, that’s all you have to look out for.  You have got your orders.”

“Yes, sir.”

I paced a turn or two on the poop and saw him take up his position face forward with his elbow in the ratlines of the mizzen-rigging before I went below.  The mate’s faint snoring was still going on peacefully.  The cuddy lamp was burning over the table on which stood a vase with flowers, a polite attention from the ship’s provision merchant—­the last flowers we should see for the next three months at the very least.  Two bunches of bananas hung from the beam symmetrically, one on each side of the rudder-casing.  Everything was as before in the ship—­except that two of her captain’s sleeping-suits were simultaneously in use, one motionless in the cuddy, the other keeping very still in the captain’s stateroom.

It must be explained here that my cabin had the form of the capital letter L the door being within the angle and opening into the short part of the letter.  A couch was to the left, the bed-place to the right; my writing-desk and the chronometers’ table faced the door.  But any one opening it, unless he stepped right inside, had no view of what I call the long (or vertical) part of the letter.  It contained some lockers surmounted by a bookcase; and a few clothes, a thick jacket or two, caps, oilskin coat, and such like, hung on hooks.  There was at the bottom of that part a door opening into my bath-room, which could be entered also directly from the saloon.  But that way was never used.

The mysterious arrival had discovered the advantage of this particular shape.  Entering my room, lighted strongly by a big bulkhead lamp swung on gimbals above my writing-desk, I did not see him anywhere till he stepped out quietly from behind the coats hung in the recessed part.

“I heard somebody moving about, and went in there at once,” he whispered.

I, too, spoke under my breath.

“Nobody is likely to come in here without knocking and getting permission.”

He nodded.  His face was thin and the sunburn faded, as though he had been ill.  And no wonder.  He had been, I heard presently, kept under arrest in his cabin for nearly seven weeks.  But there was nothing sickly in his eyes or in his expression.  He was not a bit like me, really; yet, as we stood leaning over my bed-place, whispering side by side, with our dark heads together and our backs to the door, anybody bold enough to open it stealthily would have been treated to the uncanny sight of a double captain busy talking in whispers with his other self.

“But all this doesn’t tell me how you came to hang on to our side-ladder,” I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the Sephora once the bad weather was over.