I'm looking about me now for an extra man or two, and then I'm
off again--silent come, silent go's my motto--"

"I suppose you don't happen to want a cabin-boy?" gasped Jeremy, his
voice choked in his throat.

"Well, now, that's a funny thing," said the Captain. "It's one of the
very things. But I'm afraid you're a bit young. Yet I don't know. We
might--"

He broke off, suddenly lifted his finger to his lip, whispered:

"Keep your eyes open. I'll be round again," and had vanished.

Directly after Jeremy heard Miss Jones's unwelcome voice: "Why, Jeremy,
we couldn't find you anywhere. It's turning cold--tea-time--"
With a thump and a thud and a bang he fell back into the homely world.

III

Jeremy was a perfectly normal little boy, and I defy anyone to
have discovered in him at this stage in his progress, those strange
morbidities and irregular instincts that were to be found in such
unhappy human beings as Dostoieffsky's young hero in "Podrostok," or the
unpleasant son and heir of Jude and Sue. Nevertheless, eight years
old is not too early for stranger impulses and wilder dreams than most
parents ever conceive of, and the fortnight that followed Jeremy's
meeting with the Sea-Captain was as peculiar and fantastic a fortnight
as he was ever, in all his later life, to know.

For he was haunted--really haunted in the good old solid practical
meaning of the term--haunted with the haunting that pursued Sintram
and many another famous hero. And he was haunted not only by the
Sea-Captain, but by a thousand things that attended in that hero's
company. He was haunted by a picture--whence it had come to him he did
not know--of a dead-white high road, dropping over the hill into shadow,
the light fading around it, black, heavy hedges on every side of it.
From below the hill came the pounding of the sea, exactly as he had
heard it so many many times on the hill above Rafiel, and he knew,
although his eyes could not catch it, that in the valley round the head
of the road was the fishing village with the lights just coming in the
windows, and beyond the village the sloping shingly Cove. But he could
see only the dead-white road, and upon this his eyes were always fixed
as though he were expecting someone. And he could smell the sea-pinks
and the grass damp with evening dew, and the cold dust of the road, and
the sea-smell in the wind. And he waited, knowing that the time would
come when he would be told to descend th