Captain Whalley had not changed his attitude, that seemed to express something of shame, sorrow, and defiance.

“I have even deceived you.  If it had not been for that word ‘esteem.’  These are not the words for me.  I would have lied to you.  Haven’t I lied to you?  Weren’t you going to trust your property on board this very trip?”

“I have a floating yearly policy,” Mr. Van Wyk said almost unwittingly, and was amazed at the sudden cropping up of a commercial detail.

“The ship is unseaworthy, I tell you.  The policy would be invalid if it were known . . .”

“We shall share the guilt, then.”

“Nothing could make mine less,” said Captain Whalley.

He had not dared to consult a doctor; the man would have perhaps asked who he was, what he was doing; Massy might have heard something.  He had lived on without any help, human or divine.  The very prayers stuck in his throat.  What was there to pray for? and death seemed as far as ever.  Once he got into his cabin he dared not come out again; when he sat down he dared not get up; he dared not raise his eyes to anybody’s face; he felt reluctant to look upon the sea or up to the sky.  The world was fading before his great fear of giving himself away.  The old ship was his last friend; he was not afraid of her; he knew every inch of her deck; but at her too he hardly dared to look, for fear of finding he could see less than the day before.  A great incertitude enveloped him.  The horizon was gone; the sky mingled darkly with the sea.  Who was this figure standing over yonder? what was this thing lying down there?  And a frightful doubt of the reality of what he could see made even the remnant of sight that remained to him an added torment, a pitfall always open for his miserable pretense.  He was afraid to stumble inexcusably over something—­to say a fatal Yes or No to a question.  The hand of God was upon him, but it could not tear him away from his child.  And, as if in a nightmare of humiliation, every featureless man seemed an enemy.

He let his hand fall heavily on the table.  Mr. Van Wyk, arms down, chin on breast, with a gleam of white teeth pressing on the lower lip, meditated on Sterne’s “The game’s up.”

“The Serang of course does not know.”

“Nobody,” said Captain Whalley, with assurance.

“Ah yes.  Nobody.  Very well.  Can you keep it up to the end of the trip?  That is the last under the agreement with Massy.”

Captain Whalley got up and stood erect, very stately, with the great white beard lying like a silver breastplate over the awful secret of his heart.  Yes; that was the only hope there was for him of ever seeing her again, of securing the money, the last he could do for her, before he crept away somewhere—­useless, a burden, a reproach to himself.  His voice faltered.

“Think of it!  Never see her any more:  the only human being besides myself now on earth that can remember my wife.  She’s just like her mother.  Lucky the poor woman is where there are no tears shed over those they loved on earth and that remain to pray not to be led into temptation—­because, I suppose, the blessed know the secret of grace in God’s dealings with His created children.”