“Did he talk any nonsense to you of late?” I asked casually.

“No, sir.”  Ransome was startled by the direct question; but, after a pause, he added equably:  “He told me this morning, sir, that he was sorry he had to bury our late captain right in the ship’s way, as one may say, out of the Gulf.”

“Isn’t this nonsense enough for you?” I asked, looking confidently at the intelligent, quiet face on which the secret uneasiness in the man’s breast had thrown a transparent veil of care.

Ransome didn’t know.  He had not given a thought to the matter.  And with a faint smile he flitted away from me on his never-ending duties, with his usual guarded activity.

Two more days passed.  We had advanced a little way—­a very little way—­into the larger space of the Gulf of Siam.  Seizing eagerly upon the elation of the first command thrown into my lap, by the agency of Captain Giles, I had yet an uneasy feeling that such luck as this has got perhaps to be paid for in some way.  I had held, professionally, a review of my chances.  I was competent enough for that.  At least, I thought so.  I had a general sense of my preparedness which only a man pursuing a calling he loves can know.  That feeling seemed to me the most natural thing in the world.  As natural as breathing.  I imagined I could not have lived without it.

I don’t know what I expected.  Perhaps nothing else than that special intensity of existence which is the quintessence of youthful aspirations.  Whatever I expected I did not expect to be beset by hurricanes.  I knew better than that.  In the Gulf of Siam there are no hurricanes.  But neither did I expect to find myself bound hand and foot to the hopeless extent which was revealed to me as the days went on.

Not that the evil spell held us always motionless.  Mysterious currents drifted us here and there, with a stealthy power made manifest only by the changing vistas of the islands fringing the east shore of the Gulf.  And there were winds, too, fitful and deceitful.  They raised hopes only to dash them into the bitterest disappointment, promises of advance ending in lost ground, expiring in sighs, dying into dumb stillness in which the currents had it all their own way—­their own inimical way.

The island of Koh-ring, a great, black, upheaved ridge amongst a lot of tiny islets, lying upon the glassy water like a triton amongst minnows, seemed to be the centre of the fatal circle.  It seemed impossible to get away from it.  Day after day it remained in sight.  More than once, in a favourable breeze, I would take its bearings in the fast-ebbing twilight, thinking that it was for the last time.  Vain hope.  A night of fitful airs would undo the gains of temporary favour, and the rising sun would throw out the black relief of Koh-ring looking more barren, inhospitable, and grim than ever.

“It’s like being bewitched, upon my word,” I said once to Mr. Burns, from my usual position in the doorway.