at
him was irritating and fatiguing; he could last like this for days; he
was outrageous--belonging wholly neither to death nor life, and perfectly
invulnerable in his apparent ignorance of both. Donkin felt tempted to
enlighten him.--"What are yer thinkin' of?" he asked, surlily. James Wait
had a grimacing smile that passed over the deathlike impassiveness of
his bony face, incredible and frightful as would, in a dream, have been
the sudden smile of a corpse.

"There is a girl," whispered Wait.... "Canton Street girl.------She chucked
a third engineer of a Rennie boat------for me. Cooks oysters just as I
like... She says------she would chuck------any toff------louder."

Donkin could hardly believe his ears. He was scandalised--"Would she? Yer
wouldn't be any good to 'er," he said with unrestrained disgust. Wait
was not there to hear him. He was swaggering up the East India
Dock Road; saying kindly, "Come along for a treat," pushing glass
swing-doors, posing with superb assurance in the gaslight above a
mahogany counter.--"D'yer think yer will ever get ashore?" asked Donkin,
angrily. Wait came back with a start.--"Ten days," he said, promptly, and
returned at once to the regions of memory that know nothing of time. He
felt untired, calm, and safely withdrawn within himself beyond the reach
of every grave incertitude. There was something of the immutable quality
of eternity in the slow moments of his complete restfulness. He was very
quiet and easy amongst his vivid reminiscences which he mistook joyfully
for images of an undoubted future. He cared for no one. Donkin felt this
vaguely like a blind man feeling in his darkness the fatal antagonism
of all the surrounding existences, that to him shall for ever remain
irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert his
importance, to break, to crush; to be even with everybody for
everything; to tear the veil, unmask, expose, leave no refuge--a
perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter and
said:

"Ten days. Strike me blind if ever!... You will be dead by this time
to-morrow p'r'aps. Ten days!" He waited for a while. "D'ye 'ear me?
Blamme if yer don't look dead already."

Wait must have been collecting his strength, for he said almost
aloud--"You're a stinking, cadging liar. Every one knows you." And
sitting up, against all probability, startled his visitor horribly. But
very soon Donkin recovered himself. He blustered, "What? What? Wh