and
the full brown cheeks, the brighter eyes of absolute health, and the
general air of vigour and robustness that had come to replace his
customary lassitude and timidity, had worked such an improvement that I
hardly knew him for the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and his
manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure of confidence in
himself. He now had some claims to be called nice-looking, or at least
to a certain air of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyes
of the opposite sex.

All this, of course, was natural enough, and most welcome. But,
altogether apart from this physical change, which no doubt had also been
going forward in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in his
personality that came to me with a degree of surprise that almost
amounted to shock.

And two things--as he came down to welcome me and pull up the
canoe--leaped up in my mind unbidden, as though connected in some way I
could not at the moment divine--first, the curious judgment formed of
him by Joan; and secondly, that fugitive expression I had caught in his
face while Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for special
protection from Heaven.

The delicacy of manner and feature--to call it by no milder term--which
had always been a distinguishing characteristic of the man, had been
replaced by something far more vigorous and decided, that yet utterly
eluded analysis. The change which impressed me so oddly was not easy to
name. The others--singing Maloney, the bustling Bo'sun's Mate, and Joan,
that fascinating half-breed of undine and salamander--all showed the
effects of a life so close to nature; but in their case the change was
perfectly natural and what was to be expected, whereas with Peter
Sangree, the Canadian, it was something unusual and unexpected.

It is impossible to explain how he managed gradually to convey to my
mind the impression that something in him had turned savage, yet this,
more or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was not that he
seemed really less civilised, or that his character had undergone any
definite alteration, but rather that something in him, hitherto dormant,
had awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now--so far, at least,
as we were concerned, who, after all, knew him but slightly--had stirred
into activity and risen to the surface of his being.

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as I could get, it was but
natural that my mind should continue