Only I was dead sure that he was there with the same old
entreaty. Afterwards I lighted a pipe, went above, talked to the
skipper's wife, read, investigated my boy's and also my dog's
welfare rather perfunctorily, settled down to saying an evening
Office, made an end more or less of that, just as night came on,
and then again took time to think over things. I remembered that
he would have possibly got my letter, the letter which announced
my sailing in this ship of the Archangel Line, just about the
very time that he had seemed so near me. It was natural enough,
then, that his eager mind should have embarked with me on the
'Saint Raphael.' He knew now that I was going home, contrary to
previous expectation, by the very way he had desired, the way to
see his wife and tell her his news.

That night, when I said my prayers, I took but a corner of that
couch for my elbows. I gave him room, so to speak, with odd
scrupulous courtesy, just as if he were lying there in the body.
For I knew he was there, there by his own subtle means of
transport. That night the wind rose, and for the next three days
about, we were on the downgrade as regards weather. Our captain
opined that there had been a hurricane of sorts to south-east,
out Madagascar way. We were in the troughs of a mighty swell that
grew in might till the third morn of its reign was over. In the
mad tilting of my cabin floor, and the scuffling of my cabin
accessories, that last morning, the unseen and unheard presence
that I was now growing used to, reclined unperturbed. Elsewhere I
would forget it lightly enough, as soon as ever I left the cabin,
at the saloon table, where plate and cup fretted themselves up
and down against the table frames, in the skipper's basket lounge
chair wherein I read contrasted romances, East End and Zulu, on
the deck where I groped from hold-by to hold-by, longing to
change grey sky and green sea-trenches for sunshine and blue
levels of sea and sky. The weather calmed and brightened, but the
presence was unaffected. It remained to my perception eager and
sanguine, no less, no more, than it had seemed at first.

At last the Bluff loomed to south-east. Soon a game of pitch-and-toss
precluded our access to harbor. At last we transshipped, all
three of us, boy and dog and I, to a steam-launch, and were soon
ashore. No, I won't say four of us. The presence did not make
itself felt as taking a share in that scramble of ours. I was
rather surpri