Conroy was moaning.  “I never touched him; I never touched him!”

“Never touched him!  Here, take the pin; it’s yours!”

He shrank from it.  “No, no!”

Slade pitched it to his bunk, where it lay on the blanket.  “It’s yours,” he repeated.  “If yer don’t want it, heave it overboard yerself or stick it back in the rail.  Never touched him—­you make me sick with yer never touched him!”

The door slammed on his scornful retreat; Conroy shuddered and sat up.  The iron belaying-pin lay where it had fallen, on his bed, and even in that meager light it carried the traces of its part in the mate’s death.  It had the look of a weapon rather than of a humble ship-fitting.  It rolled a couple of inches where it lay as the ship leaned to a gust, and he saw that it left a mark where it had been, a stain.

He seized it in a panic and started for the door to be rid of it at once.

As if a malicious fate made him its toy, he ran full into the Greek outside.

“Ah!” The man’s smile flashed forth, wise and livid.  “An’ so you ’ad it in your pocket all de time, den!”

Conroy answered nothing.  It was beyond striving against.  He walked to the rail and flung the thing forth with hysterical violence to the sea.

The watch going below at four o’clock found him apparently asleep, with his face turned to the wall.  They spoke in undertones, as though they feared to disturb him, but none of them mentioned the only matter which all had in mind.  They climbed heavily to their bunks, there to smoke the brief pipe, and then to slumber.  Only Slade, who slept little, would from time to time lean up on one elbow to look down and across to the still figure which hid its face throughout the night.

Conroy woke when the watch was called for breakfast by a man who thrust his head in and shouted.  He had slept at last, and now as he sat up it needed an effort of mind to recall his trouble.  He looked out at his mates, who stood about the place pulling on their clothes, with sleep still heavy on them.  They seemed as usual.  It was his turn to fetch the coffee from the galley, he remembered, and he slipped out of his bunk to dress and attend to it.

“I won’t be a minute,” he said to the others, as he dragged on his trousers.

A shaggy young Swede near the door was already dressed.

“I vill go,” he said.  “You don’t bother,” and forthwith slipped out.

The others were looking at him now, glancing with a queer, sharp interest and turning away when they met his eyes.  It was as though he were a stranger.

“That was a queer thing last night,” he said to the nearest.

“Yes,” the other agreed, with a kind of haste.

They sat about at their meal, when the coffee had been brought by the volunteer, under the same constraint.  He could not keep silent; he had to speak and make them answer.

“Where is he?” he asked abruptly.