surprise I
let the tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she came
sharply into the wind and flung us all together in a heap on the bottom.
Sangree said nothing, but while he scrambled up and made the jib sheet
fast my companion found a moment to add to his unfinished sentence the
words, too low for any ear but mine--

"Entirely unknown to himself, however."

We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree produced the map and
explained exactly where we were. Far away on the horizon, across an open
stretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with our crescent-shaped
home among them and the safe anchorage of the lagoon. An hour with this
wind would get us there comfortably, and while Dr. Silence and Sangree
fell into conversation, I sat and pondered over the strange suggestions
that had just been put into my mind concerning the "Double," and the
possible form it might assume when dissociated temporarily from the
physical body.

The whole way home these two chatted, and John Silence was as gentle and
sympathetic as a woman. I did not hear much of their talk, for the wind
grew occasionally to the force of a hurricane and the sails and tiller
absorbed my attention; but I could see that Sangree was pleased and
happy, and was pouring out intimate revelations to his companion in the
way that most people did--when John Silence wished them to do so.

But it was quite suddenly, while I sat all intent upon wind and sails,
that the true meaning of Sangree's remark about the animal flared up in
me with its full import. For his admission that he knew it was in pain
and starved was in reality nothing more or less than a revelation of his
deeper self. It was in the nature of a confession. He was speaking of
something that he knew positively, something that was beyond question or
argument, something that had to do directly with himself. "Poor starved
beast" he had called it in words that had "come out of their own
accord," and there had not been the slightest evidence of any desire to
conceal or explain away. He had spoken instinctively--from his heart,
and as though about his own self.

And half an hour before sunset we raced through the narrow opening of
the lagoon and saw the smoke of the dinner-fire blowing here and there
among the trees, and the figures of Joan and the Bo'sun's Mate running
down to meet us at the landing-stage.

V

Everything changed from the moment John Silence set foot on that island;