n had believed him
mad. He had accepted that as he accepted toil, hunger and exile, as
things to be redeemed by their end. But if it should be true! If this
grossness and harshness should, after all, be his real life! Bill saw
the agony that broke loose within his victim, and bent his head above
his work to hide a smile.

"Ah!" The quiet exclamation was all that issued from the Dago's lips;
the surge of emotion within him sought no vent in words. But Bill was
satisfied; he had the instincts of a connoisseur in torment, and the
Dago's face was now a mask that looked as if it had never smiled.

It was Dan that spoiled and undid the afternoon's work. During the
second dog-watch, when the Dago kept the look out, he carried his
pipe to the forecastle head and joined him there. Right ahead of the
ship the evening sky was still stained with the afterglow of the
sunset; the jib-boom swung gently athwart a heaven in whose
darkening arch there was still a ghost of color. Between the anchors,
where they lay lashed on their chocks, the Dago stood and gazed west
to where, beyond the horizon, the shores of Africa had turned barren
and meaningless.

"Well, lad," rumbled Dan, "gettin' near it, eh? Gettin' on towards
the little town by the bay, ain't we?"

The Dago swung round towards him. "Dere is no town," he said calmly.
"No town, no bay, no anyt'ing. I was mad, but now I know."

He spoke evenly enough, and in the lessening light his face was
indistinct. But old Dan, for all his thirty and odd years of hard
living, had an ear tuned delicately to the trouble of his voice.

"What's all' this?" he demanded shortly. "Who's been tellin' you
there ain't no town or anything? Out with it! Who was it?"

"It don't matter," said the Dago. "It was Bill." And briefly, in the
same even tones, like those of a man who talks in his sleep, he told
the tale of Bill's afternoon's sport.

"Ah, so it was Bill!" said Dan slowly, when the recital was at an
end. "Bill, was it? Ye-es. Well, o' course you know that Bill's the
biggest liar ever shipped out o' London, where liars is as common as
weevils in bread. So you don't want to take no notice of anything
Bill says."

The Dago shook his head. "It is not that," he said. "It is not de
first time I 'ave been called mad; and sometimes I have think it
myself."

"Oh, go on with ye," urged Dan. "You ain't mad."

"T'ree years," went on the Dago in his mournful, subdued voice.
"T'ree years I go about