He and Conroy were the only Englishmen there; the rest were of the races which do not fight bare-handed.  The big Greek flashed a smile through the black, shining curls of his beard, and continued to smile without speaking.  Through the tangle of incomprehensible conventions, he had arrived at last at a familiar principle.

Conroy flushed hotly, the blood rising hectic on his bruised and broken face.

“If he thinks it’s safe with me,” he cried, “he’ll learn different.  I didn’t have a chance aft there; he came on me too quick, before I was expecting him, and it was dark, besides.  Or else——­”

“It’ll be dark again,” said Slade, with intent, significant eyes fixed on him, “and he needn’t be expecting you.  But—­it don’t do to talk too much.  Talk’s easy—­talk is.”

“I’ll do more than talk,” responded Conroy.  “You’ll see!”

Slade nodded.  “Right, then; we’ll see,” he said, and returned to his breakfast.

His bunk was an upper one, lighted and aired by a brass-framed port-hole.  Here, when his meal was at an end, he lay, his pipe in his mouth, his hands behind his head, smoking with slow relish, with his wry old face upturned, and the leathery, muscular forearms showing below the rolled shirt-sleeves.  His years had ground him to an edge; he had an effect, as he lay, of fineness, of subtlety, of keen and fastidious temper.  Forty years of subjection to arbitrary masters had left him shrewd and secret, a Machiavelli of the forecastle.

Once Conroy, after seeming to sleep for an hour, rose on his elbow and stared across at him, craning his neck from his bunk to see the still mask of his face.

“Slade?” he said uncertainly.

“What?” demanded the other, unmoving.

Conroy hesitated.  The forecastle was hushed; the seamen about them slumbered; the only noises were the soothing of the water overside, the stress of the sails and gear, and the irregular tap of a hammer aft.  It was safe to speak, but he did not speak.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, and lay down again.  Slade smiled slowly, almost paternally.

It took less than eight hours for Conroy’s rancor to wear dull, and he could easily have forgotten his threat against the mate in twelve, if only he had been allowed to.  He was genuinely shocked when he found that his vaporings were taken as the utterance of a serious determination.  Just before eight bells in the afternoon watch he went forward beneath the forecastle head in search of some rope-yarns, and was cutting an end off a bit of waste-line when the Greek, he of the curly beard and extravagant eyeballs, rose like a demon of pantomime from the forepeak.  Conroy had his knife in his hand to cut the rope, and the Greek’s sudden smile seemed to rest on that and nothing else.

“Sharp, eh!” asked the Greek, in a whisper that filled the place with dark drama.

Conroy paused, apprehending his meaning with a start.