lad off his ship in the noight, and across the ice, and he brought me
this. Le Maitre, he's drunk, lyin' in his bunk; that's the way he's
preparing to come ashore. It may be one day, it may be two, afore the
schooner can get in. Le Maitre he won't get off it till it's in th'
harbour. I guess that's about all there is to tell." O'Shea added this
with grim abstinence from fiercer comment.

"Does she know?" Caius' throat hardly gave voice to the words.

"No, she don't; and I don't know who is to tell her. I can't. I can do
most things." He looked up round the walls and ceiling, as if hunting in
his mind for other things he could not do. "I'll not do that. 'Tain't in
my line. My wife is adown on her knees, mixing up prayers and crying at
a great rate; and says I to her, 'You've been a-praying about this some
years back; I'd loike to know what good it's done. Get up and tell
madame the news;' and says she that she couldn't, and she says that in
the morning you're to tell her." O'Shea set his face in grim defiance of
any sentiment of pity for Caius that might have suggested itself.

Caius said nothing; but in a minute, grasping at the one straw of hope
which he saw, "What are you going to do?" he asked.

O'Shea smoothed out the letter he held.

"Well, you needn't speak so quick; it's just that there I thought we
might have our considerations upon. I'm not above asking advoice of a
gintleman of the world like yerself; I'm not above giving advoice,
neither."

He sat looking vacantly before him with a grim smile upon his face.
Caius saw that his mind was made up.

"What are you going to do?" he asked again.

At the same moment came the sharp consciousness upon him that he himself
was a murderer, that he wanted to have Le Maitre murdered, that his
question meant that he was eager to be made privy to the plot, willing
to abet it. Yet he did not feel wicked at all; before his eyes was the
face of Josephine lying asleep, unconscious and peaceful. He felt that
he fought in a cause in which a saint might fight.

"What I may or may not do," said O'Shea, "is neither here nor there just
now. The first thing is, what you're going to do. The schooner's out
there to the north-east; the boat that's been used for the sealing is
over here to the south-west; now, there ain't no sinse, that I know of,
in being uncomfortable when it can be helped, or in putting ourselves
about for a brute of a man who ain't worth it. It's plain enough w