“Come, Captain,” he urged, “you, too, have shared in smoothing the path for these lovers.  Shall we not drink to their happy union?”

A feeling of utter loathing went over me.  I set my glass down.  “It would be a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question if I strangled you on the spot,” I muttered, boldly.

“But you are forgetting that I am already dead.”  He threw his head back as if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his glass a little unsteadily to be refilled.

He gave me a quick, evil look.  “Besides, the noise might disturb your passengers.”

I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body.  Either the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some incredible way, or was blindly on the track of it, guided by some diabolical scent.  Under the spell of his eyes, I could not manage the outright lie which stuck in my throat.

“What makes you think I have passengers?” I parried, weakly.

With intent or not, he was again fingering the fringe of the scarf that hung over the arm of the chair.

“It is not your usual practice, but you have been carrying them lately.”

He drained his glass and sat staring into it, his head drooping a little forward.  The heavy wine was beginning to have its effect upon him, but whether it would provoke him to some outright violence or drag him down into a stupor, I could not predict.  Suddenly the glass slipped from his fingers and shivered to pieces on the deck.  I started violently at the sound, and in the silence that followed I thought I heard a footfall in the cabin below.

He looked up at length from his absorbed contemplation of the bits of broken glass.  “We were talking about love, were we not?” he demanded, heavily.

I did not answer.  I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound from below.  Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant inevitable discovery.  The watch might waken or the mate appear to surprise me in converse with my nocturnal visitor.  It would be folly to attempt to conceal his presence and I despaired of getting him back to shore while his present mood held, although I remembered that the small boat, which had been lowered after we went aground, was still moored to the rail amidships.

Refilling my own glass, I offered it to him.  He lurched forward to take it, but the fumes of the wine suddenly drifted clear of his brain.  “You seem very much distressed,” he observed, with ironic concern.  “One might think you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds.”

Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck.  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I bluntly tried to fend off his implication.  I felt as if I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to probe me mercilessly with some sharp instrument.  I strode to turn the direction of his thoughts by saying, “I understand that the Stanleighs are returning to England.”