else, and with only an hour or so every evening for a tramp on the
quarter-deck."

He whispered, his arms folded on the side of my bed-place, staring
through the open port. And I could imagine perfectly the manner of
this thinking out--a stubborn if not a steadfast operation;
something of which I should have been perfectly incapable.

"I reckoned it would be dark before we closed with the land," he
continued, so low that I had to strain my hearing, near as we were
to each other, shoulder touching shoulder almost. "So I asked to
speak to the old man. He always seemed very sick when he came to
see me--as if he could not look me in the face. You know, that
foresail saved the ship. She was too deep to have run long under
bare poles. And it was I that managed to set it for him. Anyway,
he came. When I had him in my cabin--he stood by the door looking
at me as if I had the halter round my neck already--I asked him
right away to leave my cabin door unlocked at night while the ship
was going through Sunda Straits. There would be the Java coast
within two or three miles, off Angier Point. I wanted nothing
more. I've had a prize for swimming my second year in the Conway."

"I can believe it," I breathed out.

"God only knows why they locked me in every night. To see some of
their faces you'd have thought they were afraid I'd go about at
night strangling people. Am I a murdering brute? Do I look it?
By Jove! if I had been he wouldn't have trusted himself like that
into my room. You'll say I might have chucked him aside and bolted
out, there and then--it was dark already. Well, no. And for the