, on duty, it is true,
but with time to take the first freer breath in the busy day of
departure. The pilot was still on board, who gave him first a silent
glance, and then passed an insignificant remark before resuming his
lounging to and fro between the steering wheel and the binnacle. Powell
took his station modestly at the break of the poop. He had noticed
across the skylight a head in a grey cap. But when, after a time, he
crossed over to the other side of the deck he discovered that it was not
the captain's head at all. He became aware of grey hairs curling over
the nape of the neck. How could he have made that mistake? But on
board ship away from the land one does not expect to come upon a
stranger."

Powell walked past the man. A thin, somewhat sunken face, with a
tightly closed mouth, stared at the distant French coast, vague like a
suggestion of solid darkness, lying abeam beyond the evening light
reflected from the level waters, themselves growing more sombre than the
sky; a stare, across which Powell had to pass and did pass with a quick
side glance, noting its immovable stillness. His passage disturbed
those eyes no more than if he had been as immaterial as a ghost. And
this failure of his person in producing an impression affected him
strangely. Who could that old man be?

He was so curious that he even ventured to ask the pilot in a low voice.
The pilot turned out to be a good-natured specimen of his kind,
condescending, sententious. He had been down to his meals in the main
cabin, and had something to impart.

"That? Queer fish--eh? Mrs Anthony's father. I've been introduced to
him in the cabin at breakfast time. Name of Smith. Wonder if he has
all his wits about him. They take him about with them, it seems. Don't
look very happy--eh?"

Then, changing his tone abruptly, he desired Powell to get all hands on
deck and make sail on the ship. "I shall be leaving you in half an
hour. You'll have plenty of time to find out all about the old gent,"
he added with a thick laugh.

In the secret emotion of giving his first order as a fully responsible
officer, young Powell forgot the very existence of that old man in a
moment. The following days, in the interest of getting in touch with
the ship, with the men in her, with his duties, in the rather anxious
period of settling down, his curiosity slumbered; for of course the
pilot's few words had not extinguished it.

This settling down w