them lack the character to do.
Personal courage, professional skill, long experience, will carry a man
through among men. When there are women in the case, a man needs
something else. What? Well, it may sound strange to you, but I should
call it simplicity of heart. It is almost the only thing women
instinctively respect and fear. Good old Jack was simple in his way, but
I doubted his ability to handle a crisis. I was thankful when we were
through with Alexandria and were heading north for Ipsilon.

"For just as we were entering this sea cluttered with islands so thick
you can always see four or five and sometimes a dozen at once, so we
were in the midst of a score of dubious possibilities. Here was Jack
avoiding me in an apologetic fashion. Here was the Chief Mate whispering
to Mrs. Evans. Here was the Second Mate sitting in remote and solitary
grandeur in his little cubby-hole, comforting himself with a bottle of
Turkish gin. Here was young Siddons, very youthful-looking and shy,
miserable because the Captain was looking black about something. Only
the angel child and her mother seemed untouched by the horrible
paralysis which was creeping upon us and for which they were primarily
responsible. At all hours you could hear the roars of rage from the
cabin when it wanted something--the roar, the squeals, the kicks, the
hiccoughs, and the final sullen silence of satiety. I tell you, that
woman and her baby were driving us all, including her husband, crazy,
and she sat there oblivious. She wasn't even aware that Artemisia hated
her.

"I don't know exactly what Jack had expected me to do to help him. No
doubt if I had proposed to Artemisia during the voyage, married her in
Alexandria, and left her ashore in a flat out at Mex or Gabbari he would
have been satisfied. I should have got him out of a hole and got myself
into one, which appeals to most of us. Or I might have acted like a man
without any emotions at all, and repelled Artemisia's confidences with
chilling disdain. This would have set a good example to the others, he
may have thought. I have never gone in for setting a good example,
however. I have found that even those who follow the example hate the
man who sets it. And in addition, with the curious intuition of the
illiterate, Jack suspected I had not been perfectly frank with him as to
my intimacy with her. And so we were all on the watch, alert, uneasy,
silent, and unhappy.

"I still went in to see Mrs. Evan