apped, back into his room. I lingered with him while he
rolled a cigarette ere eight bells struck.

"I've got a lot more good things," he said confidentially: "Coenen's
'Come Unto Me,' and Faure's 'Crucifix'; and there's 'O Salutaris,' and
'Lead, Kindly Light' by the Trinity Choir; and 'Jesu, Lover of My Soul'
would just melt your heart. I'll play 'em for you some night."

"Do you believe in them?" I was led to ask by his rapt expression and by
the picture of his brute-driving hands which I could not shake from my
consciousness.

He hesitated perceptibly, then replied:

"I do . . . when I'm listening to them."

* * * * *

My sleep that night was wretched. Short of sleep from the previous
night, I closed my book and turned my light off early. But scarcely had
I dropped into slumber when I was aroused by the recrudescence of my
hives. All day they had not bothered me; yet the instant I put out the
light and slept, the damnable persistent itching set up. Wada had not
yet gone to bed, and from him I got more cream of tartar. It was
useless, however, and at midnight, when I heard the watch changing, I
partially dressed, slipped into my dressing-gown, and went up on to the
poop.

I saw Mr. Mellaire beginning his four hours' watch, pacing up and down
the port side of the poop; and I slipped away aft, past the man at the
wheel, whom I did not recognize, and took refuge in the lee of the wheel-
house.

Once again I studied the dim loom and tracery of intricate rigging and
lofty, sail-carrying spars, thought of the mad, imbecile crew, and
experienced premonitions of disaster. How could such a voyage be
possible, with such a crew, on the huge _Elsinore_, a cargo-carrier that
was only a steel shell half an inch thick burdened with five thousand
tons of coal? It was appalling to contemplate. The voyage had gone
wrong from the first. In the wretched unbalance that loss of sleep
brings to any good sleeper, I could decide only that the voyage was
doomed. Yet how doomed it was, in truth, neither I nor a madman could
have dreamed.

I thought of the red-blooded Miss West, who had always lived and had no
doubts but what she would always live. I thought of the killing and
driving and music-loving Mr. Pike. Many a haler remnant than he had gone
down on a last voyage. As for Captain West, he did not count. He was
too neutral a being, too far away, a sort of favoured passenger who had
nothing to do but serenely and