Mrs. Brown. This was the steward's wife, his lucky inspiration to make
Flora comfortable. "Mrs. Brown! Mrs. Brown!" At last she appeared from
somewhere. "Mrs. Anthony has come on board. Just gone into the cabin.
Hadn't you better see if you can be of any assistance?"

"Yes, sir."

And again he was alone with the situation he had created in the hardihood
and inexperience of his heart. He thought he had better go on deck. In
fact he ought to have been there before. At any rate it would be the
usual thing for him to be on deck. But a sound of muttering and of faint
thuds somewhere near by arrested his attention. They proceeded from Mr.
Smith's room, he perceived. It was very extraordinary. "He's talking to
himself," he thought. "He seems to be thumping the bulkhead with his
fists--or his head."

Anthony's eyes grew big with wonder while he listened to these noises. He
became so attentive that he did not notice Mrs. Brown till she actually
stopped before him for a moment to say:

"Mrs. Anthony doesn't want any assistance, sir."

* * * * *

This was you understand the voyage before Mr. Powell--young Powell
then--joined the _Ferndale_; chance having arranged that he should get
his start in life in that particular ship of all the ships then in the
port of London. The most unrestful ship that ever sailed out of any port
on earth. I am not alluding to her sea-going qualities. Mr. Powell
tells me she was as steady as a church. I mean unrestful in the sense,
for instance in which this planet of ours is unrestful--a matter of an
uneasy atmosphere disturbed by passions, jealousies, loves, hates and the
troubles of transcendental good intentions, which, though ethically
valuable, I have no doubt cause often more unhappiness than the plots of
the most evil tendency. For those who refuse to believe in chance he, I
mean Mr. Powell, must have been obviously predestined to add his native
ingenuousness to the sum of all the others carried by the honest ship
_Ferndale_. He was too ingenuous. Everybody on board was, exception
being made of Mr. Smith who, however, was simple enough in his way, with
that terrible simplicity of the fixed idea, for which there is also
another name men pronounce with dread and aversion. His fixed idea was
to save his girl from the man who had possessed himself of her (I use
these words on purpose because the image they suggest was clearly in Mr.
Smith's mind), possessed himself unfair