he moment I came into the cuddy he had called
upon me to stand by him--and this, it seems, I had diplomatically
promised.

His agitation was impressive and alarming in the little cabin, like the
floundering of a great whale driven into a shallow cove in a coast. He
stood up; he flung himself down headlong; he tried to tear the cushion
with his teeth; and again hugging it fiercely to his face he let himself
fall on the couch. The whole ship seemed to feel the shock of his
despair; and I contemplated with wonder the lofty forehead, the noble
touch of time on the uncovered temples, the unchanged hungry character
of the face--so strangely ascetic and so incapable of portraying
emotion.

What should he do? He had lived by being near her. He had sat--in the
evening--I knew?-all his life! She sewed. Her head was bent--so. Her
head--like this--and her arms. Ah! Had I seen? Like this.

He dropped on a stool, bowed his powerful neck whose nape was red,
and with his hands stitched the air, ludicrous, sublimely imbecile and
comprehensible.

And now he couldn't have her? No! That was too much. After thinking too
that... What had he done? What was my advice? Take her by force? No?
Mustn't he? Who was there then to kill him? For the first time I saw
one of his features move; a fighting teeth-baring curl of the lip....
"Not Hermann, perhaps." He lost himself in thought as though he had
fallen out of the world.

I may note that the idea of suicide apparently did not enter his head
for a single moment. It occurred to me to ask:

"Where was it that this shipwreck of yours took place?"

"Down south," he said vaguely with a start.

"You are not down south now," I said. "Violence won't do. They would
take her away from you in no time. And what was the name of the ship?"

"Borgmester Dahl," he said. "It was no shipwreck."

He seemed to be waking up by degrees from that trance, and waking up
calmed.

"Not a shipwreck? What was it?"

"Break down," he answered, looking more like himself every moment. By
this only I learned that it was a steamer. I had till then supposed they
had been starving in boats or on a raft--or perhaps on a barren rock.

"She did not sink then?" I asked in surprise. He nodded. "We sighted the
southern ice," he pronounced dreamily.

"And you alone survived?"

He sat down. "Yes. It was a terrible misfortune for me. Everything went
wrong. All the men went wrong. I survived."

Remembering the things one r