his spirit like a file on a
man's teeth. He sickened at the thought of his two comrades drinking
away their reason upon stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and
waking up, while the doors of a prison yawned for them in the near
future. "Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?" he thought; and a
heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom--rage against his
comrades--resolution to carry through this business if it might be
carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the shame at least was now
inevitable; and come home, home from South America--how did the song
go?--"with his pockets full of money."

"O honey, with our pockets full of money,
We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay":

so the words ran in his head; and the honey took on visible form, the
quay rose before him and he knew it for the lamp-lit Embankment, and he
saw the lights of Battersea bridge bestride the sullen river. All
through the remainder of his trick he stood entranced, reviewing the
past. He had been always true to his love, but not always sedulous to
recall her. In the growing calamity of his life, she had swum more
distant, like the moon in mist. The letter of farewell, the
dishonourable hope that had surprised and corrupted him in his distress,
the changed scene, the sea, the night and the music--all stirred him to
the roots of manhood. "I _will_ win her," he thought, and ground his
teeth. "Fair or foul, what matters if I win her?"

"Fo' bell, matey. I think um fo' bell"--he was suddenly recalled by
these words in the voice of Uncle Ned.

"Look in at the clock, Uncle," said he. He would not look himself, from
horror of the tipplers.

"Him past, matey," repeated the Hawaiian.

"So much the better for you, Uncle," he replied; and he gave up the
wheel, repeating the directions as he had received them.

He took two steps forward and remembered his dead reckoning. "How has
she been heading?" he thought; and he flushed from head to foot. He had
not observed or had forgotten; here was the old incompetence; the slate
must be filled up by guess. "Never again!" he vowed to himself in silent
fury, "never again. It shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry." And
for the remainder of his watch he stood close by Uncle Ned, and read the
face of the compass as perhaps he had never read a letter from his
sweetheart.

All the time, and spurring him to the more attention, song, loud talk,
fleering laughter, and the occasional popp