ere was no elation in his gait, which kept pace with the action of
his sombre mind. Hook was profoundly dejected.

He was often thus when communing with himself on board ship in the
quietude of the night. It was because he was so terribly alone. This
inscrutable man never felt more alone than when surrounded by his dogs.
They were socially inferior to him.

Hook was not his true name. To reveal who he really was would even at
this date set the country in a blaze; but as those who read between the
lines must already have guessed, he had been at a famous public school;
and its traditions still clung to him like garments, with which indeed
they are largely concerned. Thus it was offensive to him even now to
board a ship in the same dress in which he grappled [attacked] her, and
he still adhered in his walk to the school's distinguished slouch. But
above all he retained the passion for good form.

Good form! However much he may have degenerated, he still knew that this
is all that really matters.

From far within him he heard a creaking as of rusty portals, and through
them came a stern tap-tap-tap, like hammering in the night when one
cannot sleep. "Have you been good form to-day?" was their eternal
question.

"Fame, fame, that glittering bauble, it is mine," he cried.

"Is it quite good form to be distinguished at anything?" the tap-tap
from his school replied.

"I am the only man whom Barbecue feared," he urged, "and Flint feared
Barbecue."

"Barbecue, Flint--what house?" came the cutting retort.

Most disquieting reflection of all, was it not bad form to think about
good form?

His vitals were tortured by this problem. It was a claw within him
sharper than the iron one; and as it tore him, the perspiration dripped
down his tallow [waxy] countenance and streaked his doublet. Ofttimes he
drew his sleeve across his face, but there was no damming that trickle.

Ah, envy not Hook.

There came to him a presentiment of his early dissolution [death]. It
was as if Peter's terrible oath had boarded the ship. Hook felt a gloomy
desire to make his dying speech, lest presently there should be no time
for it.

"Better for Hook," he cried, "if he had had less ambition!" It was in
his darkest hours only that he referred to himself in the third person.

"No little children to love me!"

Strange that he should think of this, which had never troubled him
before; perhaps the sewing machine brought it to his mind. For lon