it had come to that as I sat
there alone," he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end
of his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were
thrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and
looked down. "Don't you believe it?" he inquired with tense curiosity.
I was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe
implicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.'

CHAPTER 11

'He heard me out with his head on one side, and I had another glimpse
through a rent in the mist in which he moved and had his being. The dim
candle spluttered within the ball of glass, and that was all I had to
see him by; at his back was the dark night with the clear stars, whose
distant glitter disposed in retreating planes lured the eye into the
depths of a greater darkness; and yet a mysterious light seemed to show
me his boyish head, as if in that moment the youth within him had, for
a moment, glowed and expired. "You are an awful good sort to listen like
this," he said. "It does me good. You don't know what it is to me. You
don't" . . . words seemed to fail him. It was a distinct glimpse. He was
a youngster of the sort you like to see about you; of the sort you like
to imagine yourself to have been; of the sort whose appearance claims
the fellowship of these illusions you had thought gone out, extinct,
cold, and which, as if rekindled at the approach of another flame, give
a flutter deep, deep down somewhere, give a flutter of light . . . of
heat! . . . Yes; I had a glimpse of him then . . . and it was not the
last of that kind. . . . "You don't know what it is for a fellow in my
position to be believed--make a clean breast of it to an elder man. It
is so difficult--so awfully unfair--so hard to understand."

'The mists were closing again. I don't know how old I appeared to
him--and how much wise. Not half as old as I felt just then; not half
as uselessly wise as I knew myself to be. Surely in no other craft as in
that of the sea do the hearts of those already launched to sink or swim
go out so much to the youth on the brink, looking with shining eyes upon
that glitter of the vast surface which is only a reflection of his
own glances full of fire. There is such magnificent vagueness in
the expectations that had driven each of us to sea, such a glorious
indefiniteness, such a beautiful greed of adventures that are their own
and only reward. What we get--well, we won't talk o