erred the interests of
my friend before those of all the islanders in the South Seas. This is
a poor, private morality, if you like; but it is mine, and the best I
have; and I am not half so much ashamed of having embarked at all on
this adventure, as I am proud that (while I was in it, and for the
sake of my friend) I was up early and down late, set my own hand to
everything, took dangers as they came, and for once in my life played
the man throughout. At the same time, I could have desired another field
of energy; and I was the more grateful for the redeeming element of
mystery. Without that, though I might have gone ahead and done as well,
it would scarce have been with ardour; and what inspired me that night
with an impatient greed of the sea, the island, and the wreck, was the
hope that I might stumble there upon the answer to a hundred questions,
and learn why Captain Trent fanned his red face in the exchange, and why
Mr. Dickson fled from the telephone in the Mission Street lodging-house.

CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH JIM AND I TAKE DIFFERENT WAYS.

I was unhappy when I closed my eyes; and it was to unhappiness that I
opened them again next morning, to a confused sense of some calamity
still inarticulate, and to the consciousness of jaded limbs and of
a swimming head. I must have lain for some time inert and stupidly
miserable, before I became aware of a reiterated knocking at the
door; with which discovery all my wits flowed back in their accustomed
channels, and I remembered the sale, and the wreck, and Goddedaal, and
Nares, and Johnson, and Black Tom, and the troubles of yesterday,
and the manifold engagements of the day that was to come. The thought
thrilled me like a trumpet in the hour of battle. In a moment, I had
leaped from bed, crossed the office where Pinkerton lay in a deep trance
of sleep on the convertible sofa, and stood in the doorway, in my night
gear, to receive our visitors.

Johnson was first, by way of usher, smiling. From a little behind, with
his Sunday hat tilted forward over his brow, and a cigar glowing between
his lips, Captain Nares acknowledged our previous acquaintance with a
succinct nod. Behind him again, in the top of the stairway, a knot of
sailors, the new crew of the Norah Creina, stood polishing the wall with
back and elbow. These I left without to their reflections. But our two
officers I carried at once into the office, where (taking Jim by the
shoulder) I shook him slowly