suppose you've always been so--from your early youth."

Ricardo's eyes remained cast down. His fingers toyed absently with the
pack on the table.

"I don't know that it was so early. I first got in the way of it playing
for tobacco--in forecastles of ships, you know--common sailor games. We
used to spend whole watches below at it, round a chest, under a
slush lamp. We would hardly spare the time to get a bite of salt
horse--neither eat nor sleep. We could hardly stand when the watches
were mustered on deck. Talk of gambling!" He dropped the reminiscent
tone to add the information, "I was bred to the sea from a boy, you
know."

Schomberg had fallen into a reverie, but without losing the sense of
impending calamity. The next words he heard were:

"I got on all right at sea, too. Worked up to be mate. I was mate of a
schooner--a yacht, you might call her--a special good berth too, in the
Gulf of Mexico, a soft job that you don't run across more than once in a
lifetime. Yes, I was mate of her when I left the sea to follow him."

Ricardo tossed up his chin to indicate the room above; from which
Schomberg, his wits painfully aroused by this reminder of Mr. Jones's
existence, concluded that the latter had withdrawn into his bedroom.
Ricardo, observing him from under lowered eyelids, went on:

"It so happened that we were shipmates."

"Mr Jones, you mean? Is he a sailor too?"

Ricardo raised his eyelids at that.

"He's no more Mr. Jones than you are," he said with obvious pride. "He a
sailor! That just shows your ignorance. But there! A foreigner can't be
expected to know any better. I am an Englishman, and I know a gentleman
at sight. I should know one drunk, in the gutter, in jail, under the
gallows. There's a something--it isn't exactly the appearance, it's
a--no use me trying to tell you. You ain't an Englishman, and if you
were, you wouldn't need to be told."

An unsuspected stream of loquacity had broken its dam somewhere deep
within the man, had diluted his fiery blood and softened his pitiless
fibre. Schomberg experienced mingled relief and apprehension, as if
suddenly an enormous savage cat had begun to wind itself about his legs
in inexplicable friendliness. No prudent man under such circumstances
would dare to stir. Schomberg didn't stir. Ricardo assumed an easy
attitude, with an elbow on the table. Schomberg squared his shoulders
afresh.

"I was employed, in that there yacht--schooner, whatever you cal