at to be towed
ashore, and would then take the Captain home by the quicksands. Would
O'Shea make him drunk, and then cast him headfirst into the swallowing
sand? It seemed preposterous to be harbouring such thought against the
cheerful and most respectable farmer at his side. What foundation had he
for it? None but the hearing of an idle boast that the man had made one
day to his wife, and that she in simplicity had taken for earnest.

Le Maitre signified that he would go with O'Shea. Indeed, looked at from
a short distance, the passage through the ice did not look so difficult
as it had proved.

O'Shea and Caius parted without word or glance of farewell. Caius
clambered over the side of the schooner; the one thought in his mind was
to get a nearer view of Le Maitre.

This man was still standing sleepily. He did not bear closer inspection
well. His clothes were dirty, especially about the front of vest and
coat; there was everything to suggest an entire lack of neatness in
personal habits; more than that, the face at the time bore unmistakable
signs that enough alcohol had been drunk to benumb, although not to
stupefy, his faculties: the eye was bloodshot; the face, weather-beaten
as it was, was flabby. In spite of all this, Caius had expected a more
villainous-looking person, and so great was his loathing that he would
rather have seen him in a more obnoxious light. The man had a certain
dignity of bearing; his face had that unfurrowed look that means a low
moral sense, for there is no evidence of conflict. His eyes were too
near each other; this last was, perhaps, the only sign by which Nature
from the outset had marred a really excellent piece of manly proportion.

Caius made these observations involuntarily. As Le Maitre stepped here
and there in a dull way while a chest that belonged to him was being
lowered into the boat, Caius could not help realizing that his
preconceived notions of the man as a monster had been exaggerated; he
was a common man, fallen into low habits, and fixed in them by middle
age.

Le Maitre got into the boat in seaman-like fashion. He was perfectly at
home there, and dull as his eye looked, he tacitly assumed command. He
took O'Shea's pole from him, stepped to the prow, and began to turn the
boat, without regarding the fact that O'Shea was still holding hasty
conversation with the men on the schooner concerning the public events
of the winter months--the news they had brought from the