“And why should anything have happened to Ezekiel Trenoweth?  That’s what I want to know.  Why should anything have happened to him?”

He was still watching the waves as they danced and twinkled in the sun.  He never looked towards me, but plucked with nervous fingers at his torn trousers.  The gulls hovered around us with melancholy cries, as they wheeled in graceful circles and swooped down to their prey in the depths at our feet.  Presently he spoke again in a meditative, far-away voice—­

“Ezekiel Trenoweth, fair, broad, and six foot two in his socks; why should anything have happened to him?”

“But you seem to know him, and know the ship he sailed in.  Tell me—­ please tell me what has happened.  Did you sail in the same ship?  And, if so, what has become of it?”

“I sailed,” said my companion, still examining the horizon, “from Ceylon on the 12th of July, in the ship Mary Jane, bound for Liverpool.  Consequently, if Ezekiel Trenoweth sailed in the Belle Fortune we couldn’t very well have been in the same ship, and that’s logic,” said he, turning to me for the first time with a watery and uncertain smile, but quickly withdrawing his eyes to their old occupation.

But he had lifted a great load from my heart, so that for very joy at knowing my father was not among the crew of the Mary Jane I could not speak for a time, but sat watching his face, and thinking how I should question him next.

“Sailed in the Mary Jane, bound for Liverpool,” he repeated, his face twitching slightly, and his hands still plucking at his trousers, “sailed along with—­never mind who.  And this boy’s Ezekiel Trenoweth’s son, and I knew him; knew him well.”  His voice was husky, and he seemed to have something in his throat, but he went on:  “Well, it’s a strange world.  To think of him being dead!” looking at the cap—­which he had taken off his head.

“What!  Father dead?”

“No, my lad, t’other chap:  him as this cap belonged to.  Ah, he was a devil, he was.  Can’t fancy him dead, somehow; seemed as though the water wasn’t made as could have drowned him; always said he was born for the gallows, and joked about it.  But he’s gone this time, and I’ve got his cap.  ’Tis a hard thought that I should outlive him; but, curse him, I’ve done it, and here’s his cap for proof—­why, what the devil is the lad staring at?”

During his muttered soliloquy I had turned for a moment to look across Polkimbra Beach, when suddenly my eyes were arrested and my heart again set violently beating by a sight that almost made me doubt whether the events of the morning were not still part of a wild and disordered dream.  For there, at about fifty yards’ distance, and advancing along the breakers’ edge, was another man, dressed like my companion, and also watching the sea.

“What’s the matter, boy?  Speak, can’t you?”

“It’s a man.”