AT night land was sighted after sundown, and the schooner
hove to. Montgomery intimated that was his destination.
It was too far to see any details; it seemed to me then simply
a low-lying patch of dim blue in the uncertain blue-grey sea.
An almost vertical streak of smoke went up from it into the sky.
The captain was not on deck when it was sighted. After he had vented
his wrath on me he had staggered below, and I understand he went to sleep
on the floor of his own cabin. The mate practically assumed the command.
He was the gaunt, taciturn individual we had seen at the wheel.
Apparently he was in an evil temper with Montgomery. He took
not the slightest notice of either of us. We dined with him in a
sulky silence, after a few ineffectual efforts on my part to talk.
It struck me too that the men regarded my companion and his animals
in a singularly unfriendly manner. I found Montgomery very reticent
about his purpose with these creatures, and about his destination;
and though I was sensible of a growing curiosity as to both, I did not
press him.

We remained talking on the quarter deck until the sky was thick
with stars. Except for an occasional sound in the yellow-lit forecastle
and a movement of the animals now and then, the night was very still.
The puma lay crouched together, watching us with shining eyes, a black
heap in the corner of its cage. Montgomery produced some cigars.
He talked to me of London in a tone of half-painful reminiscence,
asking all kinds of questions about changes that had taken place.
He spoke like a man who had loved his life there, and had been
suddenly and irrevocably cut off from it. I gossiped as well as I
could of this and that. All the time the strangeness of him was
shaping itself in my mind; and as I talked I peered at his odd,
pallid face in the dim light of the binnacle lantern behind me. Then I
looked out at the darkling sea, where in the dimness his little island
was hidden.

This man, it seemed to me, had come out of Immensity merely to save
my life. To-morrow he would drop over the side, and vanish again out
of my existence. Even had it been under commonplace circumstances,
it would have made me a trifle thoughtful; but in the first place was
the singularity of an educated man living on this unknown little island,
and coupled with that the extraordinary nature of his luggage.
I found myself repeating the captain's question, What did he want
with the beasts? Why,