ould aggravate a saint into open mutiny."

His easy good humour had returned; but after a short burst of laughter,
he became serious.

"Never fear," he said, "I won't slip away. If there is to be any
throat-cutting--as you seem to hint--mine will be there, too, I promise
you, and. . . ."

He stretched his arms out, glanced at them, shook them a little.

"And this pair of arms to take care of it," he added, in his old,
careless drawl.

But the master of the brig sitting with both his elbows on the table,
his face in his hands, had fallen unexpectedly into a meditation so
concentrated and so profound that he seemed neither to hear, see, nor
breathe. The sight of that man's complete absorption in thought was to
Carter almost more surprising than any other occurrence of that night.
Had his strange host vanished suddenly from before his eyes, it could
not have made him feel more uncomfortably alone in that cabin where
the pertinacious clock kept ticking off the useless minutes of the calm
before it would, with the same steady beat, begin to measure the aimless
disturbance of the storm.

III

After waiting a moment, Carter went on deck. The sky, the sea, the
brig itself had disappeared in a darkness that had become impenetrable,
palpable, and stifling. An immense cloud had come up running over the
heavens, as if looking for the little craft, and now hung over it,
arrested. To the south there was a livid trembling gleam, faint and sad,
like a vanishing memory of destroyed starlight. To the north, as if
to prove the impossible, an incredibly blacker patch outlined on the
tremendous blackness of the sky the heart of the coming squall. The
glimmers in the water had gone out and the invisible sea all around lay
mute and still as if it had died suddenly of fright.

Carter could see nothing. He felt about him people moving; he heard
them in the darkness whispering faintly as if they had been exchanging
secrets important or infamous. The night effaced even words, and its
mystery had captured everything and every sound--had left nothing free
but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out
its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the
careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was
affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel?
What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To
himself? He felt suddenly without any