well? No
better proof of something wrong was needed. Therefore he hoped, as he
vanished at last, that Mr Powell would be on their side. And this time
Mr Powell did not answer this hope with an embarrassed laugh.

That young officer was more and more surprised at the nature of the
incongruous revelations coming to him in the surroundings and in the
atmosphere of the open sea. It is difficult for us to understand the
extent, the completeness, the comprehensiveness of his inexperience, for
us who didn't go to sea out of a small private school at the age of
fourteen years and nine months. Leaning on his elbow in the mizzen
rigging and so still that the helmsman over there at the other end of
the poop might have (and he probably did) suspect him of being
criminally asleep on duty, he tried to "get hold of that thing" by some
side which would fit in with his simple notions of psychology. "What
the deuce are they worrying about?" he asked himself in a dazed and
contemptuous impatience. But all the same "jailer" was a funny name to
give a man; unkind, unfriendly, nasty. He was sorry that Mr Smith was
guilty in that matter because, the truth must be told, he had been to a
certain extent sensible of having been noticed in a quiet manner by the
father of Mrs Anthony. Youth appreciates that sort of recognition
which is the subtlest form of flattery age can offer. Mr Smith seized
opportunities to approach him on deck. His remarks were sometimes weird
and enigmatical. He was doubtless an eccentric old gent. But from that
to calling his son-in-law (whom he never approached on deck) nasty names
behind his back was a long step.

And Mr Powell marvelled...

"While he was telling me all this,"--Marlow changed his tone--"I
marvelled even more. It was as if misfortune marked its victims on the
forehead for the dislike of the crowd. I am not thinking here of
numbers. Two men may behave like a crowd, three certainly will when
their emotions are engaged. It was as if the forehead of Flora de
Barral were marked. Was the girl born to be a victim; to be always
disliked and crushed as if she were too fine for this world? Or too
luckless--since that also is often counted as sin."

Yes, I marvelled more since I knew more of the girl than Mr Powell--if
only her true name; and more of Captain Anthony--if only the fact that
he was the son of a delicate erotic poet of a markedly refined and
autocratic temperament. Yes, I knew the