“What on earth’s the matter with you?” I asked, astonished.

He was extremely confused.  “Beg your pardon, sir.  I made sure you were in your cabin.”

“You see I wasn’t.”

“No, sir.  I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not a moment ago.  It’s most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir.”

I passed on with an inward shudder.  I was so identified with my secret double that I did not even mention the fact in those scanty, fearful whispers we exchanged.  I suppose he had made some slight noise of some kind or other.  It would have been miraculous if he hadn’t at one time or another.  And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly self-controlled, more than calm—­almost invulnerable.  On my suggestion he remained almost entirely in the bathroom, which, upon the whole, was the safest place.  There could be really no shadow of an excuse for any one ever wanting to go in there, once the steward had done with it.  It was a very tiny place.  Sometimes he reclined on the floor, his legs bent, his head sustained on one elbow.  At others I would find him on the camp-stool, sitting in his grey sleeping-suit and with his cropped dark hair like a patient, unmoved convict.  At night I would smuggle him into my bed-place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads.  It was an infinitely miserable time.  It was lucky that some tins of fine preserves were stowed in a locker in my stateroom; hard bread I could always get hold of; and so he lived on stewed chicken, pate de foie gras, asparagus, cooked oysters, sardines—­on all sorts of abominable sham delicacies out of tins.  My early morning coffee he always drank; and it was all I dared do for him in that respect.

Every day there was the horrible manoeuvring to go through so that my room and then the bath-room should be done in the usual way.  I came to hate the sight of the steward, to abhor the voice of that harmless man.  I felt that it was he who would bring on the disaster of discovery.  It hung like a sword over our heads.

The fourth day out, I think (we were then working down the east side of the Gulf of Siam, tack for tack, in light winds and smooth water)—­the fourth day, I say, of this miserable juggling with the unavoidable, as we sat at our evening meal, that man, whose slightest movement I dreaded, after putting down the dishes ran up on deck busily.  This could not be dangerous.  Presently he came down again; and then it appeared that he had remembered a coat of mine which I had thrown over a rail to dry after having been wetted in a shower which had passed over the ship in the afternoon.  Sitting stolidly at the head of the table I became terrified at the sight of the garment on his arm.  Of course he made for my door.  There was no time to lose.

“Steward,” I thundered.  My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation.  This was the sort of thing that made my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger.  I had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a confidential air to the carpenter.  It was too far to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new captain.