e. I watched; but I dare say you know that there
could have been nothing inimical in this low behaviour of mine. On the
contrary. I'll tell you now what he was doing. He was helping himself
out of a decanter. I saw every movement, and I said to myself mockingly
as though jeering at Franklin in my thoughts, 'Hallo! Here's the captain
taking to drink at last.' He poured a little brandy or whatever it was
into a long glass, filled it with water, drank about a fourth of it and
stood the glass back into the holder. Every sign of a bad drinking bout,
I was saying to myself, feeling quite amused at the notions of that
Franklin. He seemed to me an enormous ass, with his jealousy and his
fears. At that rate a month would not have been enough for anybody to
get drunk. The captain sat down in one of the swivel arm-chairs fixed
around the table; I had him right under me and as he turned the chair
slightly, I was looking, I may say, down his back. He took another
little sip and then reached for a book which was lying on the table. I
had not noticed it before. Altogether the proceedings of a desperate
drunkard--weren't they? He opened the book and held it before his face.
If this was the way he took to drink, then I needn't worry. He was in no
danger from that, and as to any other, I assure you no human being could
have looked safer than he did down there. I felt the greatest contempt
for Franklin just then, while I looked at Captain Anthony sitting there
with a glass of weak brandy-and-water at his elbow and reading in the
cabin of his ship, on a quiet night--the quietest, perhaps the finest, of
a prosperous passage. And if you wonder why I didn't leave off my ugly
spying I will tell you how it was. Captain Anthony was a great reader
just about that time; and I, too, I have a great liking for books. To
this day I can't come near a book but I must know what it is about. It
was a thickish volume he had there, small close print, double columns--I
can see it now. What I wanted to make out was the title at the top of
the page. I have very good eyes but he wasn't holding it conveniently--I
mean for me up there. Well, it was a history of some kind, that much I
read and then suddenly he bangs the book face down on the table, jumps up
as if something had bitten him and walks away aft.

"Funny thing shame is. I had been behaving badly and aware of it in a
way, but I didn't feel really ashamed till the fright of being fo