nd answered the
signal, our own light showing far out, and lighting the great moving
sea on which we rode so that one could count every crest about it.

The action completely staggered me. Without a thought I rushed up the
ladder to the hurricane deck and stood beside him. He started as he saw
me, and I could see him biting his lips, while an ugly look came into
his eyes. But I charged him at once.

"Good-evening, Mister Mate," I said; "will you kindly tell me why you
burnt that blue light?"

His excuse came readily.

"I burnt it to answer the signal yonder."

"But that was no affair of ours!"

He shrugged his shoulders, and muttered something about custom and
something else, which he meant to be impudent. Yet in another moment he
made effort to recall himself, and met me with an open, smiling face
which covered anger. I began to upbraid myself for the folly of it,
bursting out thus when there was no call for show; and I turned the
talk to other things, searching to learn about him and his past; yet it
was without reward, for he fenced in speech with all the point of a
close Scotsman. But we came down the bridge together when the new watch
was set; and he took a glass of wine with me in the saloon.

It was all well acted, a fine pretence of common civility, yet I
believe that we two then took acquaintance of each other in the fullest
measure; and he learnt, though he did not show it, that in the game of
eavesdropping there may be two that play.

When I turned in at last, the little wind there was had fallen away, so
that the yacht was almost without motion; save, indeed, that long roll
from which an ocean-going ship is rarely free. I had the electric light
in my cabin with a tap on the end of my bunk, mighty convenient for
reading and waking; but I was full of sleep in spite of what had been
above, and I turned out the lamp directly I fell upon my bed.

I think I must have slept very heavily for an hour, when a great sense
of unrest and waking weariness took me, and I lay, now dozing, now
dreaming, so that in all my dreams I saw the face of Paolo. I seemed to
walk the deck of the _Celsis_, yet was Paolo there more strong and
masterful than I; again I went to the stoke-hole, and he was charging
the men with much authority; I hurried thence to the saloon, and in my
silly dream I thought to see Captain Black upon the one hand and Paolo
on the other, and a great friendship of manner and discourse between
them.