e was thinking of that moment when he had to decide
what to do and had turned his head to call for help. And he knew now
that if he had called, if he had run down and hammered on that man's
door to come up and take charge, to resume the authority he had
abdicated so short a time before, there would have been no answer.

That was the point around which his memories clustered now, although
nobody save himself was aware of it. Indeed, there had been a distinctly
admiring note in this gentleman's voice, flat and unemotional as it was
by habit, when he had climbed up the ladder and set foot on the deck of
the _Kalkis_. "You were very cool," he had said. He had not been cool.
There had been a moment, just after he had pulled that telegraph-handle,
and the ship, instead of slowly gaining sternway and moving off into the
turbulence of her wake, had given another inexplicable shudder, and the
bows sank into a sudden deathlike solidity when he rang "stop," as
though that noise and that shudder and that almost imperceptible
subsidence had been her death-throe, the last struggle of her
complicated and tatterdemalion career. That moment had settled the
_Kalkis_ and it had nearly settled him, too. He had turned right round
and seen the man at the wheel methodically passing the spokes through
his hands, his eye on the ship's head, his ear alert for the word of
command. Mr. Spokesly had seen this, and for an instant he had had a
shocking impulse to run to the far side of the bridge and go over, into
the water. A moment of invisible yet fathomless panic. Looking back at
it, he had a vague impression of a glimpse into eternity--as though for
that instant he had really died, slipping into an unsuspected crevice
between the past and the future.... The man at the wheel was looking at
him. He heard a voice, the voice of the helmsman, saying, "She don't
steer," and the moment was past. He walked firmly to the side and looked
down at the boat, and heard someone calling, "Where is your ladder?"

And the next thing he remembered was the remark of this gentleman when
he arrived on deck: "You were very cool." He had said in reply: "There
is something I wish to tell you. I have sent for the captain and he has
not come up. I must go and fetch him." He remembered also the dry
comment, "Oh, so you are not the captain?" and the start for the cabin
as Evanthia came out, buttoning her gloves, dressed for walking. He
remembered that. The gentleman who had