But Mr. Burns found another way, a way of his own which had, at all events, the merit of saving his breath, if no other.

Again he did not say anything.  He only frowned.  And it was an angry frown.  I waited.  Nothing more came.

“What’s the matter? . . .  Can’t you tell after being nearly two years in the ship?” I addressed him sharply.

He looked as startled for a moment as though he had discovered my presence only that very moment.  But this passed off almost at once.  He put on an air of indifference.  But I suppose he thought it better to say something.  He said that a ship needed, just like a man, the chance to show the best she could do, and that this ship had never had a chance since he had been on board of her.  Not that he could remember.  The last captain. . . .  He paused.

“Has he been so very unlucky?” I asked with frank incredulity.  Mr. Burns turned his eyes away from me.  No, the late captain was not an unlucky man.  One couldn’t say that.  But he had not seemed to want to make use of his luck.

Mr. Burns—­man of enigmatic moods—­made this statement with an inanimate face and staring wilfully at the rudder casing.  The statement itself was obscurely suggestive.  I asked quietly: 

“Where did he die?”

“In this saloon.  Just where you are sitting now,” answered Mr. Burns.

I repressed a silly impulse to jump up; but upon the whole I was relieved to hear that he had not died in the bed which was now to be mine.  I pointed out to the chief mate that what I really wanted to know was where he had buried his late captain.

Mr. Burns said that it was at the entrance to the gulf.  A roomy grave; a sufficient answer.  But the mate, overcoming visibly something within him—­something like a curious reluctance to believe in my advent (as an irrevocable fact, at any rate), did not stop at that—­though, indeed, he may have wished to do so.

As a compromise with his feelings, I believe, he addressed himself persistently to the rudder-casing, so that to me he had the appearance of a man talking in solitude, a little unconsciously, however.

His tale was that at seven bells in the forenoon watch he had all hands mustered on the quarterdeck and told them they had better go down to say good-bye to the captain.

Those words, as if grudged to an intruding personage, were enough for me to evoke vividly that strange ceremony:  The bare-footed, bare-headed seamen crowding shyly into that cabin, a small mob pressed against that sideboard, uncomfortable rather than moved, shirts open on sunburnt chests, weather-beaten faces, and all staring at the dying man with the same grave and expectant expression.

“Was he conscious?” I asked.

“He didn’t speak, but he moved his eyes to look at them,” said the mate.