re you are!" I was yapping like
a nerve-strung puppy.

McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face
beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark how
shockingly it had changed. It was almost colourless. The jaw had somehow
lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose in their
sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he only blinked
at the light.

"I am not surprised," he remarked at length. "After what I've seen and
heard--" He lifted his fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on
the table. "Man--let's have a nip!"

He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the
narrow stateroom. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either
hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses
down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its
shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave
him a ghastly look--like a mutilation or an unspeakable birthmark. He
shook the bottle gently and chuckled his "Dead men's liquor" again. Then
he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his portion, and
sat down.

"A parrot," he mused, a little of the liquor's colour creeping into his
cheeks. "No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was--"

"_Was?_" I caught him up. "What's happened--what's become of her?"

"Vanished. Evaporated. I haven't seen her since night before last, when
I caught her trying to lower the boat--"

"_Stop it!_" It was I who banged the table now, without any of the
reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk--_drunk_, I tell you. A _cat_!
Let a _cat_ throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out
below this minute, on affairs of her own."

"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of the
damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over this
hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."

"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow
Bjoernsen. By the way, McCord--" I stopped there on account of the look
in his eyes.

He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to
shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless
circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward
to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two
heads drew together, as though there were something to whisp