e captain
grasped Powell's shoulder as if in a vice and glanced at Mrs. Anthony's
cabin door, and it was enough. He knew that the young man understood
him. Rather! Silence! Silence for ever about this. Their very glances
became stealthy. Powell looked from the body to the door of the dead
man's state-room. The captain nodded and let him go; and then Powell
crept over, hooked the door open and crept back with fearful glances
towards Mrs. Anthony's cabin. They stooped over the corpse. Captain
Anthony lifted up the shoulders.

Mr. Powell shuddered. "I'll never forget that interminable journey
across the saloon, step by step, holding our breath. For part of the way
the drawn half of the curtain concealed us from view had Mrs. Anthony
opened her door; but I didn't draw a free breath till after we laid the
body down on the swinging cot. The reflection of the saloon light left
most of the cabin in the shadow. Mr. Smith's rigid, extended body looked
shadowy too, shadowy and alive. You know he always carried himself as
stiff as a poker. We stood by the cot as though waiting for him to make
us a sign that he wanted to be left alone. The captain threw his arm
over my shoulder and said in my very ear: "The steward'll find him in the
morning."

"I made no answer. It was for him to say. It was perhaps the best way.
It's no use talking about my thoughts. They were not concerned with
myself, nor yet with that old man who terrified me more now than when he
was alive. Him whom I pitied was the captain. He whispered. "I am
certain of you, Mr. Powell. You had better go on deck now. As to me
. . . " and I saw him raise his hands to his head as if distracted. But his
last words before we stole out that cabin stick to my mind with the very
tone of his mutter--to himself, not to me:

"No! No! I am not going to stumble now over that corpse."

* * *

"This is what our Mr. Powell had to tell me," said Marlow, changing his
tone. I was glad to learn that Flora de Barral had been saved from
_that_ sinister shadow at least falling upon her path.

We sat silent then, my mind running on the end of de Barral, on the
irresistible pressure of imaginary griefs, crushing conscience, scruples,
prudence, under their ever-expanding volume; on the sombre and venomous
irony in the obsession which had mastered that old man.

"Well," I said.

"The steward found him," Mr. Powell roused himself. "He went in there
with a cup of