ght you said," insisted Mr Smith. He stirred,
seemed to detach himself from the rail with difficulty. His long,
slender figure straightened into stiffness, as if hostile to the
enveloping soft peace of air and sea and sky, emitted into the night a
weak murmur which Mr Powell fancied was the word, "Abominable" repeated
three times, but which passed into the faintly louder declaration: "The
moment has come--to go to bed," followed by a just audible sigh.

"I sleep very well," added Mr Smith in his restrained tone. "But it is
the moment one opens one's eyes that is horrible at sea. These days!
Oh, these days! I wonder how anybody can..."

"I like the life," observed Mr Powell.

"Oh, you. You have only yourself to think of. You have made your bed.
Well, it's very pleasant to feel that you are friendly to us. My
daughter has taken quite a liking to you, Mr Powell."

He murmured, "Good-night" and glided away rigidly. Young Powell asked
himself with some distaste what was the meaning of these utterances.
His mind had been worried at last into that questioning attitude by no
other person than the grotesque Franklin. Suspicion was not natural to
him. And he took good care to carefully separate in his thoughts Mrs
Anthony from this man of enigmatic words--her father. Presently he
observed that the sheen of the two deck dead-lights of Mr Smith's room
had gone out. The old gentleman had been surprisingly quick in getting
into bed. Shortly afterwards the lamp in the foremost skylight of the
saloon was turned out; and this was the sign that the steward had taken
in the tray and had retired for the night.

Young Powell had settled down to the regular officer-of-the-watch tramp
in the dense shadow of the world decorated with stars high above his
head, and on earth only a few gleams of light about the ship. The lamp
in the after skylight was kept burning through the night. There were
also the dead-lights of the stern-cabins glimmering dully in the deck
far aft, catching his eye when he turned to walk that way. The brasses
of the wheel glittered too, with the dimly lit figure of the man
detached, as if phosphorescent, against the black and spangled
background of the horizon.

Young Powell, in the silence of the ship, reinforced by the great silent
stillness of the world, said to himself that there was something
mysterious in such beings as the absurd Franklin, and even in such
beings as himself. It was a strange a