er
delectable curries. At such times she has a special curry made for
herself of tinned lobster, or shrimp, or tinned chicken.

Ah, I must not forget. I have learned that it was no man-interest (in
me, if you please) that brought about her sudden interest to come on the
voyage. It was for her father that she came. Something is the matter
with Captain West. At rare moments I have observed her gazing at him
with a world of solicitude and anxiety in her eyes.

I was telling an amusing story at table yesterday midday, when my glance
chanced to rest upon Miss West. She was not listening. Her food on her
fork was suspended in the air a sheer instant as she looked at her father
with all her eyes. It was a stare of fear. She realized that I was
observing, and with superb control, slowly, quite naturally, she lowered
the fork and rested it on her plate, retaining her hold on it and
retaining her father's face in her look.

But I had seen. Yes; I had seen more than that. I had seen Captain
West's face a transparent white, while his eyelids fluttered down and his
lips moved noiselessly. Then the eyelids raised, the lips set again with
their habitual discipline, and the colour slowly returned to his face. It
was as if he had been away for a time and just returned. But I had seen,
and guessed her secret.

And yet it was this same Captain West, seven hours later, who chastened
the proud sailor spirit of Mr. Pike. It was in the second dog-watch that
evening, a dark night, and the watch was pulling away on the main deck. I
had just come out of the chart-house door and seen Captain West pace by
me, hands in pockets, toward the break of the poop. Abruptly, from the
mizzen-mast, came a snap of breakage and crash of fabric. At the same
instant the men fell backward and sprawled over the deck.

A moment of silence followed, and then Captain West's voice went out:

"What carried away, Mr. Pike?"

"The halyards, sir," came the reply out of the darkness.

There was a pause. Again Captain West's voice went out.

"Next time slack away on your sheet first."

Now Mr. Pike is incontestably a splendid seaman. Yet in this instance he
had been wrong. I have come to know him, and I can well imagine the hurt
to his pride. And more--he has a wicked, resentful, primitive nature,
and though he answered respectfully enough, "Yes, sir," I felt safe in
predicting to myself that the poor devils under him would receive the
weigh