"He couldn't hear us talking--could he?" My double breathed into
my very ear, anxiously.

His anxiety was an answer, a sufficient answer, to the question I
had put to him. An answer containing all the difficulty of that
situation. I closed the port-hole quietly, to make sure. A louder
word might have been overheard.

"Who's that?" he whispered then.

"My second mate. But I don't know much more of the fellow than you
do."

And I told him a little about myself. I had been appointed to take
charge while I least expected anything of the sort, not quite a
fortnight ago. I didn't know either the ship or the people.
Hadn't had the time in port to look about me or size anybody up.
And as to the crew, all they knew was that I was appointed to take
the ship home. For the rest, I was almost as much of a stranger on
board as himself, I said. And at the moment I felt it most
acutely. I felt that it would take very little to make me a
suspect person in the eyes of the ship's company.

He had turned about meantime; and we, the two strangers in the
ship, faced each other in identical attitudes.

"Your ladder--" he murmured, after a silence. "Who'd have thought
of finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out
here! I felt just then a very unpleasant faintness. After the