ght sight of
the terrible cleft in Mr. Mellaire's head. There it was, for all the
world to read, and Mr. Pike's and mine were the only eyes that could read
it. The sparse hair upon the second mate's crown served not at all to
hide the cleft. It began out of sight in the thicker hair above the
ears, and was exposed nakedly across the whole dome of head.

The stream of abuse for Ditman Olansen was choked in Mr. Pike's throat.
All he was capable of for the moment was to stare, petrified, at that
enormous fissure flanked at either end with a thatch of grizzled hair. He
was in a dream, a trance, his great hands knotting and clenching
unconsciously as he stared at the mark unmistakable by which he had said
that he would some day identify the murderer of Captain Somers. And in
that moment I remembered having heard him declare that some day he would
stick his fingers in that mark.

Still as in a dream, moving slowly, right hand outstretched like a talon,
with the fingers drawn downward, he advanced on the second mate with the
evident intention of thrusting his fingers into that cleft and of clawing
and tearing at the brain-life beneath that pulsed under the thin film of
skin.

The second mate backed away along the bridge, and Mr. Pike seemed
partially to come to himself. His outstretched arm dropped to his side,
and he paused.

"I know you," he said, in a strange, shaky voice, blended of age and
passion. "Eighteen years ago you were dismasted off the Plate in the
_Cyrus Thompson_. She foundered, after you were on your beam ends and
lost your sticks. You were in the only boat that was saved. Eleven
years ago, on the _Jason Harrison_, in San Francisco, Captain Somers was
beaten to death by his second mate. This second mate was a survivor of
the _Cyrus Thompson_. This second mate'd had his skull split by a crazy
sea-cook. Your skull is split. This second mate's name was Sidney
Waltham. And if you ain't Sidney Waltham . . . "

At this point Mr. Mellaire, or, rather, Sidney Waltham, despite his fifty
years, did what only a sailor could do. He went over the bridge-rail
side-wise, caught the running gear up-and-down the mizzen-mast, and
landed lightly on his feet on top of Number Three hatch. Nor did he stop
there. He ran across the hatch and dived through the doorway of his room
in the 'midship-house.

Such must have been Mr. Pike's profundity of passion, that he paused like
a somnambulist, actually rubbed hi