“Preposterous—­isn’t it?”

We were walking to and fro athwart the quarterdeck.  No one of the crew forward could be seen (the day was Sunday), and the mate pursued: 

“There was some little dispute about it.  Our chaps took offence.  ‘As if we would harbour a thing like that,’ they said.  ’Wouldn’t you like to look for him in our coal-hole?’ Quite a tiff.  But they made it up in the end.  I suppose he did drown himself.  Don’t you, sir?”

“I don’t suppose anything.”

“You have no doubt in the matter, sir?”

“None whatever.”

I left him suddenly.  I felt I was producing a bad impression, but with my double down there it was most trying to be on deck.  And it was almost as trying to be below.  Altogether a nerve-trying situation.  But on the whole I felt less torn in two when I was with him.  There was no one in the whole ship whom I dared take into my confidence.  Since the hands had got to know his story, it would have been impossible to pass him off for any one else, and an accidental discovery was to be dreaded now more than ever. . . .

The steward being engaged in laying the table for dinner, we could talk only with our eyes when I first went down.  Later in the afternoon we had a cautious try at whispering.  The Sunday quietness of the ship was against us; the stillness of air and water around her was against us; the elements, the men were against us—­everything was against us in our secret partnership; time itself—­for this could not go on forever.  The very trust in Providence was, I suppose, denied to his guilt.  Shall I confess that this thought cast me down very much?  And as to the chapter of accidents which counts for so much in the book of success, I could only hope that it was closed.  For what favourable accident could be expected?

“Did you hear everything?” were my first words as soon as we took up our position side by side, leaning over my bed-place.

He had.  And the proof of it was his earnest whisper, “The man told you he hardly dared to give the order.”

I understood the reference to be to that saving foresail.

“Yes.  He was afraid of it being lost in the setting.”

“I assure you he never gave the order.  He may think he did, but he never gave it.  He stood there with me on the break of the poop after the maintopsail blew away, and whimpered about our last hope--positively whimpered about it and nothing else—­and the night coming on!  To hear one’s skipper go on like that in such weather was enough to drive any fellow out of his mind.  It worked me up into a sort of desperation.  I just took it into my own hands and went away from him, boiling, and—­ But what’s the use telling you?  You know! . . .  Do you think that if I had not been pretty fierce with them I should have got the men to do anything?  Not it!  The bo’s’n perhaps?  Perhaps!  It wasn’t a heavy sea—­it was a sea gone mad!  I suppose the end of the world will be something like that; and a man may have the heart to see it coming once and be done with it—­but to have to face it day after day—­I don’t blame anybody.  I was precious little better than the rest.  Only—­I was an officer of that old coal-waggon, anyhow—­”