“When Ransome happens to be forward in his galley everything’s so still that one might think everybody in the ship was dead,” he grumbled.  “The only voice I do hear sometimes is yours, sir, and that isn’t enough to cheer me up.  What’s the matter with the men?  Isn’t there one left that can sing out at the ropes?”

“Not one, Mr. Burns,” I said.  “There is no breath to spare on board this ship for that.  Are you aware that there are times when I can’t muster more than three hands to do anything?”

He asked swiftly but fearfully: 

“Nobody dead yet, sir?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t do,” Mr. Burns declared forcibly.  “Mustn’t let him.  If he gets hold of one he will get them all.”

I cried out angrily at this.  I believe I even swore at the disturbing effect of these words.  They attacked all the self-possession that was left to me.  In my endless vigil in the face of the enemy I had been haunted by gruesome images enough.  I had had visions of a ship drifting in calms and swinging in light airs, with all her crew dying slowly about her decks.  Such things had been known to happen.

Mr. Burns met my outburst by a mysterious silence.

“Look here,” I said.  “You don’t believe yourself what you say.  You can’t.  It’s impossible.  It isn’t the sort of thing I have a right to expect from you.  My position’s bad enough without being worried with your silly fancies.”

He remained unmoved.  On account of the way in which the light fell on his head I could not be sure whether he had smiled faintly or not.  I changed my tone.

“Listen,” I said.  “It’s getting so desperate that I had thought for a moment, since we can’t make our way south, whether I wouldn’t try to steer west and make an attempt to reach the mailboat track.  We could always get some quinine from her, at least.  What do you think?”

He cried out:  “No, no, no.  Don’t do that, sir.  You mustn’t for a moment give up facing that old ruffian.  If you do he will get the upper hand of us.”

I left him.  He was impossible.  It was like a case of possession.  His protest, however, was essentially quite sound.  As a matter of fact, my notion of heading out west on the chance of sighting a problematical steamer could not bear calm examination.  On the side where we were we had enough wind, at least from time to time, to struggle on toward the south.  Enough, at least, to keep hope alive.  But suppose that I had used those capricious gusts of wind to sail away to the westward, into some region where there was not a breath of air for days on end, what then?  Perhaps my appalling vision of a ship floating with a dead crew would become a reality for the discovery weeks afterward by some horror-stricken mariners.

That afternoon Ransome brought me up a cup of tea, and while waiting there, tray in hand, he remarked in the exactly right tone of sympathy: 

“You are holding out well, sir.”