“We have lost Koh-ring at last.  For many days now I don’t think I have been two hours below altogether.  I remain on deck, of course, night and day, and the nights and the days wheel over us in succession, whether long or short, who can say?  All sense of time is lost in the monotony of expectation, of hope, and of desire—­which is only one:  Get the ship to the southward!  Get the ship to the southward!  The effect is curiously mechanical; the sun climbs and descends, the night swings over our heads as if somebody below the horizon were turning a crank.  It is the prettiest, the most aimless! . . . and all through that miserable performance I go on, tramping, tramping the deck.  How many miles have I walked on the poop of that ship!  A stubborn pilgrimage of sheer restlessness, diversified by short excursions below to look upon Mr. Burns.  I don’t know whether it is an illusion, but he seems to become more substantial from day to day.  He doesn’t say much, for, indeed, the situation doesn’t lend itself to idle remarks.  I notice this even with the men as I watch them moving or sitting about the decks.  They don’t talk to each other.  It strikes me that if there exists an invisible ear catching the whispers of the earth, it will find this ship the most silent spot on it. . . .

“No, Mr. Burns has not much to say to me.  He sits in his bunk with his beard gone, his moustaches flaming, and with an air of silent determination on his chalky physiognomy.  Ransome tells me he devours all the food that is given him to the last scrap, but that, apparently, he sleeps very little.  Even at night, when I go below to fill my pipe, I notice that, though dozing flat on his back, he still looks very determined.  From the side glance he gives me when awake it seems as though he were annoyed at being interrupted in some arduous mental operation; and as I emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome.  There they are:  stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden.  Or else decoyed.  Even as I have been decoyed into this awful, this death-haunted command. . . .”

*****

The only spot of light in the ship at night was that of the compass-lamps, lighting up the faces of the succeeding helmsmen; for the rest we were lost in the darkness, I walking the poop and the men lying about the decks.  They were all so reduced by sickness that no watches could be kept.  Those who were able to walk remained all the time on duty, lying about in the shadows of the main deck, till my voice raised for an order would bring them to their enfeebled feet, a tottering little group, moving patently about the ship, with hardly a murmur, a whisper amongst them all.  And every time I had to raise my voice it was with a pang of remorse and pity.